


Resurrection

by clockheartedcrocodile



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst, Beach Episode, Bickering, Biomechanical Engineering, Dom/sub Undertones, Dreams and Nightmares, Drift Side Effects, Dubious Science, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Illegal Activities, Jealousy, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Oral Sex, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim (2013), Saving the World, Under-Desk Blow Jobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-06-28 22:48:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 59,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15716676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: Newt Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb saved the world once.That was a long time ago. Four years, to be exact. Since then they’ve been working for Hannibal Chau, and their world saving days are behind them. Newt authenticates kaiju specimens for Hannibal's international buyers, and Hermann balances the books back in Hong Kong. Neither of them ask any questions.It’s not a bad arrangement, until a terrifying new threat makes itself known in the Pacific.





	1. Prologue

Berlin is bright and damp in the early evening rain. The cold gray sky can’t quite choke out the sun gleaming between the buildings as it sets. The light makes a prism of the rain-spattered windows and casts innumerable rainbows across the boring hotel carpet.

“And as he stood, surveying the cluttered skyline of Berlin,” Dr. Newton Geiszler murmurs, standing by the window with his hands tucked in the pockets of his too-tight jeans, “he thought to himself, what the _fuck_ am I supposed to do with this eyeball.”

The eyeball in question is sitting at the foot of his bed, tightly sealed up and refrigerated in one of his black metal transport trunks. Hannibal Chau’s words might as well be stamped across the lid like a Fragile sign. _Sure kid, tour it around, put it on your Insta, but you better be fuckin’ ready to make the drop when I tell you to._

The faculty at the Freie Universität Berlin had loved it.

They’d offered Newt the biggest amphitheater on campus, and Newt had taken great pleasure in magnanimously refusing them. “There’s a kind of hands-on aspect, actually,” he told HR, already considering which of his many white lab coats to wear during the lecture. “I’m bringing in a specimen.”

The eyeball had been a huge hit, as Newt knew it would be. Kaiju specimens are exceedingly rare, especially somewhere like Berlin, and this one was intact. One of Ceramander’s eyeballs, slightly larger than a beach ball, black and wet-looking and shiny like a peeled grape. Dead, bluish veins tugged the surface taut like fish netting. A nearly perfect specimen.

Newt had never seen Ceramander in person, but he’d watched it die on the news. 2,000 tons of reptilian meat-mass lurching up the beaches of Molokai, only eight years ago. It had taken the combined power of Striker Eureka and Coyote Tango to take it down. Four pilots. Three of them would be dead within the next five years.

Now one of Ceramander’s twenty or so eyes was in the possession of Dr. Newton Geiszler, thirty-nine, author of three books in four years and former K-Science Officer for the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. At least, it’s his until Hannibal Chau finds a buyer for it.

Newt turns away from the window and flops into the swivel chair by the desk in the corner of the room. He hates evenings like this, when his whole body is alive and buzzing with that nighttime energy not-energy that tortures him when he’s bored. He wants to go, to do, to see, to touch. Berlin is _right there._ The city of his birth, even if he has only the haziest recollections of it.

But he can’t leave that kaiju specimen unattended. Hannibal would have his hide for it.

Hide, now there’s a thought. Hadn’t Hannibal said something about kaiju hide recently? Newt flips open his laptop, left carelessly on the desk with innumerable scribbled memos and peeling Post-it notes. Hannibal had been talking about it like it was a prize, like he could make leather out of it, but kaiju skin is a good 125mm thick and all dense silicone, nerve endings, and kaiju blue toxicity.

But it was a hell of a thought. _Kaiju leather._ It made Newt’s hands twitch as he checked his email one more time. Nothing from Hannibal. Nothing from Hermann.

Newt misses him.

With Hermann he could talk, unfiltered and unencumbered. There was a certain Teacher Voice he put on during lectures; slow and competent and loud enough to be heard from the back. Ten-dollar words when four-letter ones would do. With Hermann, all Newt had to say was, “Dude,” and Hermann _knew._

But he is in Hong Kong, with Hannibal Chau, and Newt is here. Berlin is boring without him. Newt hasn’t had a decent argument in months.

There’s no use in trying to sleep without medication, not with all this restless, nervous energy stirring him up, so Newt throws back two pills with a swallow of tap water and hopes the nightmares don’t come back. They’re always worse when he takes the pills. “Holy shit,” he grimaces at the taste. “That burns.”

He’s alone in his hotel room, so no one tells him off for complaining. Newt unbuckles his Docs and kicks them under the bed, followed by his skinny jeans and rhinestone belt. _You’re almost forty, Newton,_ Hermann had muttered once, when Newt had draped his arm across his shoulders and demanded Hermann look at his new jeans. _You should start acting like it._

Newt grins to himself as he pulls back the covers, already sleepy as the pills start to take effect. “Dude, when I get back to Hong Kong,” he says, but he doesn’t finish before he falls into bed, and sleep descends on him like the Red Sea crashing back down.

 

_The dreams of the drift are worse._

_Newt has drifted twice in his life, the first was an agony, the second, a kind of ecstasy. Like being torn from his moorings by the currents of boiling ocean, warm and weightless and full of dreams and memories that were his and not his. That first drift had been like drowning. The second had felt like being steeped._

_The nightmares have none of that drift-ocean’s wild, wet warmth. Everything comes all at once, flooding into Newt and blossoming inside him like a poisonous fungus. The ghost of a drift. A hazy, indistinct outline._

_In a proper drift, he would spill out of himself, pour himself into the mind and memories of another and live there, sharing the weight._

_In Newt’s nightmares, it’s just him._

_And the spider-feet hooking their delicate fingers into his pores, and the dull, clenching agony of his tendons being wired into place one by one, and Father must never find out, Father must never find out, and the hot press of angry, fearful bodies against him in a bunker below Hong Kong where people kill each other because they’re scared Hannibal took his glasses off you saw what you saw and now it’s going to get you and you’ve pissed yourself but if you can convince your father that the Jaeger program works the taste of milk and coffee your leg is fucking killing you and they give you glowing sacs beneath your tongue to spit venom that melts concrete and then you_

_die_

Newt wakes with a scream in his throat.

He almost cracks his head open on the bedside lamp as he clambers out of bed, barefoot and shaking. “Give it up, man, give it up,” he stammers, thumping himself on the side of his head. “Don't take your meds, don't take your fucking meds what the hell.”

However early it is, it still has to be morning. He can stay up till dawn, tackle the new day as it comes. Fuck Ceramander’s eyeball and fuck Hannibal Chau, he can still go out, do something to occupy his brain. He’s got a desperate craving for _café au lait,_ and he’s fucking lactose intolerant. His leg hurts like hell. He feels small, small, small.

Newt looks at the clock on the bedside stand. 10:04 p.m.

His heart sinks in his chest. Slowly, Newt sits down on the edge of the bed, and stares at the floor. The silence of his hotel room is almost suffocating. He clings to the city noise outside, tries to focus on the dull roaring of engines, the honking horns, the wail of a distant siren.

It’ll be around four in the morning in Hong Kong, right now. Hermann would be asleep. Newt could call him, listen to him bitching about the time for a good ten minutes. And when Hermann finally tires himself out, Newt could jump in and just _talk._ No fake Teacher Voice, no premeditated thought, no rhetoric. He could say whatever the fuck words in whatever order and Hermann would listen to them.

 _That would be nice,_ Newt thinks, flopping backwards onto his bed. _Shit dude, that would be amazing._

There’s no point in going back to bed, not right away, anyway, so Newt gets up wearily and lurches into the bathroom to take a piss. He catches sight of himself in the mirror above the sink and grimaces. His left eye is still fucked, even after four years. Still bloodshot and watery, prone to tearing up if a breeze caught him the wrong way.

Hannibal gave him a pair of sunglasses to cover that up. Blue as kaiju blood, with the flashiest gold frames Hannibal could find. Hermann says they makes him look juvenile. Newt thinks they make him look like a gangster, which he proudly told Hannibal once, only to be met with a big, growly laugh right in his face.

The new tattoo suits him better. Otachi’s tongue in blue and white, curling up and around his neck like a lover’s hand.

Out in the bedroom, Newt hears his laptop start beeping at him. He remembers all it once that he’d left it open on the desk only a few hours ago. _The Universität._

“Oh my God, no,” Newt says angrily, running his hands fiercely through his hair. “I don’t wanna think about lecturing right now, alright, fuck off.”

He stops short on the bathroom threshold, eyes wide and staring. Glowing red on the screen of his laptop, silent and inviting, is the grinning face of a kaiju.

The symbol of Hannibal Chau.

Newt hurls himself across the room and into the chair by the desk, logging back into his email as fast as possible. There it is, top of his inbox. It’s short and to the point.

 

_I’ve arranged a drop in a parking garage outside your hotel. Give them the eye and don’t ask questions. Details to follow._

_Get your ass back to Hong Kong once you're done. I need you to consult on a deal with some Aussies._

_Don’t wear the goddam lab coat this time._


	2. The Boys in the Back Room

The Bone Slums are still as hot and crowded as they had been when Newt first set foot there. The pockmarked bones of Reckoner insinuate themselves into the sky, and the very air itself seems to taste of kaiju blue. People go crazy in this part of town. Sometimes they climb the bones and hurl themselves off.

Newt has a taxi drop him off on the pavement and stands sweating in the Hong Kong heat, shoving his sleeves up past his elbows to try and air out his skin. He keeps his head down, his eyes downcast against the blazing red and gold of neon signs. Now is not the time to be a rockstar. Newt is made of ink and rhinestones and leather, a colorful presentation proclaiming to the world, _toxic, do not touch_. He swills attention and glory like wine, but not in the Bone Slums. Never in the Bone Slums.

Here he keeps his hands shoved deep in his pockets, and peers into the shadows between buildings looking for Reckoner’s bones to guide the way to Hannibal’s pharmacy. He can see them dimly through the tangle of electrical cables, crooked buildings, and LCD screens. He’s getting close. Farther off, towards the bay, Newt can see twenty stories of scaffolding standing black against the moon. The Wei Tang memorial is almost finished, after four years of meticulous construction. The three arms of Crimson Typhoon seem to cradle the city.

Newt reaches the market overpass and pushes awkwardly through the crowd, pressed tight up against the railing as he climbs up the stairs. It used to be an ordeal, finding Hannibal’s pharmacy in all this, but by now Newt’s feet have memorized the route, and he doesn’t have to look for Slattern’s face hidden on every signpost.

The thought of Slattern makes Newt want to punch a wall. Hannibal had drawn that symbol himself, thought it looked cool, thought it looked don’t-fuck-with-me enough for his business without actually depicting a kaiju the world recognized. Then the Precursors had slipped their wet little claws into Newt’s brain and pulled that symbol out, building their kaiju to match it.

Slattern. Category V. A titan.

Newt can’t see Hannibal’s symbol without a blacklight but he knows it’s there, stamped outside the door to the pharmacy. It’s a vaguely gaudy storefront, but no more so than any other apothecary in Hong Kong. The only indication of its owner is the number of armed guards posted outside, watching Newt from behind their tinted glasses.

Newt knew the value of what lay beyond that door was beyond price, though these days, the kaiju specimens were far from the most valuable thing that lived there. In Newt’s eyes, at least.

He had completed the drop in Berlin, per Hannibal’s instruction, and had once again been disappointed in the choice of purchaser. A short, well-build man with sandy blond hair and two diamond studs in one ear, flanked by his men as they waited outside their van. Newt had tried to give him the usual spiel- keep it refrigerated at such-and-such a temperature, don’t jostle it, for fuck’s sake, don’t knock it around- but as usual their main concern was loading it up and shipping it out as fast as possible.

Newt scowls in frustration, pushing open the door to the pharmacy with one elbow. Whatever, he didn’t care what they were doing with it. Even if they were going to _eat_ it. There were people who did that. Cooking up the poisonous flesh as one final fuck you to the kaiju, some obscene act of dominance. _Who’s the top of the food chain now?_

Hannibal’s pharmacy smells like cinnamon and bile. Exotic spices and burning incense, ammonia, latex, and antiseptic bleach. The distinctly salty, rotting-seaweed smell of dried kaiju flesh reeks from every bottle and display case. It still makes Newt gag a little in the back of his throat when he walks in, but he steels himself against it and squints so his eyes don’t water.

When Hannibal gave him the grand tour, the first things he talked about were the doors. There were three of them, not counting the one that led out onto the street. One leading to the Showroom, one to the Vault, and one to the Back Room. “That’s where you’ll be workin’,” he’d said, cracking the lid on one of the bottles on the far wall. “You’ll find it accommodating enough.”

Now Newt cracks the lid on the same bottle, and the wall turns almost silently, taking Newt with it. He’s immediately met with the clean smell of chalk and the sound of a hologram being manipulated.

Newt’s heart swells in his chest. Finally, home.

They don’t have the same kind of floorspace here that they had at the Shatterdome, but it’s enough. All metal and polished red wood, with an open area in the middle and a low, garishly lit ceiling. Hermann’s desk is on one side of the room and Newt’s is on the other; there are white scrape marks on the floor from Newt scooting his desk chair back and forth across the gap. The walls are still laden with jars of packaged and preserved soft tissue, like everywhere else in the pharmacy, and every square inch of remaining wall space is black with chalkboard paint.

Newt’s desk has been organized while he was away, and he supposes it was too much to ask that Hermann leave it alone. His plastic Jaegers- _“They’re not dolls, Hermann, they’re figurines,”_ \- are still standing sentinel over his desktop though. Six of them, all Mark 1’s, though Newt has yet to tell Hermann why.

At the center of the room, taking up most of the floorspace, are two holographic projectors and a mechanized display table. Dr. Hermann Gottlieb is leaning over it, his hands full of pixels, rewiring a virtual three-dimensional image of some complicated Jaegertech. He tugs off his reading glasses by the cord and gestures Newt over. “Come here at once,” he says, as though Newt had been there the whole time. “I want to show you something.”

 _Dude,_ Newt thinks, grinning so wide his face is beginning to ache. _Show me whatever, man, I’m there_.

Hermann hasn’t changed much over the years, though the strange, alien angles of his face have only grown sharper with time. He’s wearing black today, and it suits him better than Newt cares to admit. His cane is leaning up against the display table as he works the machine.

His eye isn’t as bad as Newt’s, for which Newt is privately grateful.

Newt grabs Hermann’s desk chair and swings it around in front of him, straddling it backwards and rolling himself over to the middle of the room. He tilts his head up for his welcome-back kiss on the cheek. “I’ve been craving _café au lait_ for days. That’s your fault, you know, you’re responsible for that.”

Hermann kisses him distractedly. “Have you been taking the pills?”

“I have to, dude, they help me sleep.”

“You most certainly do not have to,” sighs Hermann, returning his attention to the hologram. Newt gets caught up in watching his hands as they dip back and forth in front of the projector, amazed by their particular, fussy delicacy despite their size. He’s wearing rings today. That’s new. Four or five on each hand, some of them ornate and all of them golden. One of them is wrought in the shape of Slattern’s face, with four ruby eyes like drops of blood.

“Those are so cool, dude,” Newt says lightly. “Those from Hannibal? You gotta stop giving me shit about that rhinestone belt if you’re gonna wear stuff like that.”

Hermann smiles at him, pleased, and flourishes his own hands in the mirrored light of the hologram. “Gifts from Mr. Chau. You’d be surprised by what we’ve managed to accomplish since you’ve been on the lecture circuit.”

“Uh-huh,” says Newt, his eyes still on the rings.

“Mr. Chau has been exceedingly impressed with my bookkeeping and has insisted I branch out into other areas of the business. In the past two months alone I’ve convinced Mr. Chau to expand into collecting Jaegertech. Look at this,” he says, grinning _._ “Look what I’ve found.”

Hermann brings up the image of a PONS system with a flick of his hand and spins it in the air, giving Newt a good 360 view of the headset.

“A proper PONS unit,” he says fondly. “Won’t that be a fine thing, to drift again using something more than two tin cans and a bit of string.”

Newt sits up a little straighter, the soles of his boots squeaking against the floor. “You’re serious?” he says, amazed. “You want to do it again?”

“Of course I do,” says Hermann, as though nothing could be more natural. “It’s been four years, Newton. I still have the nightmares.”

The nightmares, of course. Newt sinks down a little in his chair, but his eyes are still bright and interested. “How long till the system’s online?”

Hermann gives an errant twitch of his head, a fussy, mouselike thing. “Several months at least. I’m afraid the principal concern is the lack of anything to drift with.”

“Shit, you’re right,” Newt says quietly, rubbing his hands nervously up and down the legs of his jeans. No Jaeger to pilot, no kaiju brain to invade. Just the two of them, alone in the drift.

“You do want to drift again, don’t you?” Hermann asks, and Newt realizes that his fond look has been replaced by one of concern. “It was your idea in the first place.”

“I know that,” Newt snaps. “Of course I want to. I just, you know, man, I just, my brain doesn’t fucking stop.”

“I am aware.”

“And I can’t help thinking, you know, that, that maybe if we drift again, it won’t be as good this time. Or maybe the side effects will get even worse. The nightmares. You remember the pilots developed all kinds of psychosomatic symptoms after drifting under pressure. I’ve been craving _milk_ in my coffee, dude, I can’t drink milk.”

“And I keep looking at my own arms and being surprised when there’s nothing there, Newton,” Hermann says sharply. “I do apologize if picking up a few of my habits has been _inconvenient_ for you, but if you’ll recall, it was the end of the world and we didn’t have much choice.”

“It’s not,” Newt mumbles, staring at a fixed point three inches to the left of Hermann’s head. “It’s not inconvenient, I just . . . I missed you, that’s all, and I gave an eyeball to these guys and I think they’re going to eat it, and I feel like I’m going kind of crazy.”

Hermann’s gaze softens. “I missed you too, Newton.”

“I’ve been away for months, and what, a kiss on the cheek? You’re busy, I get it, you’re so fucking busy, but it’s not the _end of the world_ anymore, Hermann.”

Hermann gives Newt a sad look, and disperses the holographic display with a wave of his hand. Newt watches his hand settle on his cane, gripping it tight and careful. It’s a new cane, too, with a grip made from the unmistakable washed-out enamel of kaiju bone.

“I apologize,” Hermann says gently. “I know I’ve been neglecting you.”

“Yeah, dude,” Newt mutters. He feels like a child. Hermann always makes him feel like a child, and they’re the same fucking age.

“I do wish you’d come out and _say_ when you want attention, instead of spinning about the lab like an arrogant schoolboy.”

“I do want to drift with you again. I do.”

“So do I,” says Hermann, which makes Newt want to fold in on himself and sink into the floor, because _holy shit he thinks about drifting with me, he still wants to, even after he’s seen the inside of my brain_.

Newt forces himself to hold eye contact with Hermann, never an easy thing. Looking at him directly is like looking into the neon mouth of a kaiju, painfully bright, and Newt feels pierced by his gaze like a butterfly pinned to a board. The delicate finality of Hermann’s scrutiny had been unendurable at first. Staring each other down in the airport, at last putting faces to names, and the feeling that had cramped in Newt’s stomach when he saw Hermann’s expression for the first time. He watched Hermann study him, solve him, and write him off, all in a minute, and the tight line of his lips as he said, _you’re not as young as you think you are_ , had been the finishing blow.

It was excruciating. The thought that he could be _solved_. Known so immediately and so completely before he was stabbed with a knife he hadn’t even known he was handing over.

Nowadays, Hermann’s attention is an indescribable comfort.

Newt gets off the desk chair and kicks it back across the lab to Hermann’s desk, grinning when Hermann grimaces. He comes a little closer and bumps his nose against Hermann’s temple, one hand on Hermann’s arm while he loosens his own tie with the other. “Can I kiss you?” he asks. “I’ve been holding it in for a while.”

“Oh, go on then,” Hermann says with a small smile.

Newt leans in at once, pressing a kiss to the angled edge of his cheekbone. “Missed you, buddy,” he grins. “Missed you real bad.”

He slides his hand along the slope of Hermann’s shoulder before squeezing him tightly, as though checking an apple for ripeness. He feels Hermann’s hand slip around to the small of his back, and closes his eyes happily, sucking small, eager kisses against Hermann’s neck. Hermann’s hand in his hair is _incredible_ , easily one of Newt’s top ten best feelings in the world. He can feel the rings, cold and soothing against his scalp.

Hermann pulls away just enough to kiss Newt properly, tightening his grip on Newt’s hair. _This is almost like drifting,_ Newt thinks, as he puts his arms around Hermann’s neck. They had slipped into this closeness so easily, so calmly, after the drift, as though nothing could be more natural. The first time they’d kissed, Newt was half-convinced they’d done it many times before.

“What are you thinking about,” Hermann murmurs into Newt’s mouth.

“Dude,” Newt sighs, moving to kiss along Hermann’s jaw, frightening in its sharpness. “I’m thinking about the drift. I can’t, I can’t think about anything else.”

“I miss getting into your head too,” Hermann whispers. His breath is fresh and light against Newt’s ear.

“Would you settle for getting into my pants?”

“A mediocre substitute.”

“God, you’re such a dick,” Newt groans, his eyes fluttering closed. “If you keep shit-talking me like that I’m gonna have to blow you, dude.”

 _“Newton,”_ Hermann hisses, and he sounds scandalized, but Newt can feel his hard on pressing against his leg and isn’t fooled for a moment.

He grins and plants one more messy kiss to Hermann’s cheek before sinking to his knees, and as his legs touch the ground, he feels a sudden dull pain begin to throb at the forefront of his skull. “Ah,” he groans, pressing the heel of his hand against his ruined eye. “Ah, fuck, this, ow, this is uncalled for.”

“Newton?” Hermann frowns, his voice suddenly worried.

“I’ve got the absolute worst dehydration headache right now,” Newt says angrily. He gives Hermann a scathing glare. “Out of _nowhere,_ Hermann, is this you? Are you fucking dehydrated right now?”

Hermann hesitates. Newt can see the gears in his mind turning, recalibrating, accounting for everything he’s eaten or drunk today.

“You are, aren’t you. I bet you haven’t had more than a cup of tea today, I knew it,” Newt says angrily. “I leave for like, four or five months, and you forget to eat like a human again, Christ.”

“I have been _working,_ Newton,” Hermann says, his lip curling. “Do you have any idea the kind of focus recoding a PONS system requires? Not all of us have the luxury of jet-setting around the world eating catfish dipped in gold or whatever it is you do.”

“Oh I’m, _I’m_ eating catfish dipped in gold?” Newt says incredulously, hand on his chest. “You’re the one wearing rubies and kaiju teeth!”

“The fuck are you doin’ down there, Geiszler, you lose a contact lens?”

Newt scrambles to his feet. The revolving wall of the back room clicks into place, and Hannibal Chau is leaning with his back against the shelves, grinning that gold-toothed grin and sloshing the specimens in their bottles as he steps down into the lab. His gold-plated shoes jangle with every step.

“Mr. Chau,” Hermann says breathlessly, standing at attention. “Sir.”

“You look like an idiot,” Newt huffs. “Stop standing at attention, you’re not an officer.”

“So, you finally got here,” says Hannibal. He’s smiling while he says it, his hands in the pockets of his smoking jacket. He’s _huge._ The force of his personality fills up every room he’s in, and Newt, who’s used to being the dominant personality in any room, can’t help but shrink back into himself in his presence.

Hannibal gives Newt a cursory up-and-down look before turning to Hermann. “You’ve been doing a bang-up job with the bookkeeping, Herr Doktor. One of my old partners back in Brooklyn, his accountant got caught skimming money off their import takes. I told him, you should talk to _my_ guy, he’ll have a look at the books for you, tell you exactly how much you’re out.”

“I’ll attend to it immediately, Mr. Chau,” says Hermann warmly, and Newt feels a pang of frustration.

“How come he’s _Herr Doktor_ but I’m _kid?”_ he snaps.

Hannibal laughs. Newt wishes he could tell when Hannibal’s looking at him, but it’s impossible to tell with those awful, bug-like glasses that make his eyes look like Egyptian beetles.

“I got some guys who think they’re gonna sell me a roll of kaiju skin,” he says finally. “200 pounds off Insurrector’s back. You’ve worked with Insurrector?”

“Incredible specimen, sir, absolutely incredible. 200 pounds, you said?” Newt asks, mind racing. Insurrector had attacked the Santa Monica pier only five years ago, and would’ve taken the whole city with it if Striker Eureka hadn’t taken it down.

“That’s right,” Hannibal wryly. “I want you to come with me, make sure it’s genuine. These guys are dangerous. Bring a gun.”

“I’ll go,” Hermann says at once, standing a little straighter. Newt shoots him a grateful look. “I’ll go with you.”

“No offense, Herr Doktor,” says Hannibal, waving a hand dismissively, “but I can’t have you slowing us down if things get violent.”

Hermann says nothing. Newt grits his teeth to stop his face from twitching.

He can’t shoot a gun.

Now is not the time to tell Hannibal that.

Hannibal gives Newt a pointed look and makes his slow, loping way towards the door. Newt feels Hermann’s hand lightly brush the back of his neck.

“Be careful,” he mutters.

“Yeah man,” Newt whispers, unconvinced. “I’m gonna.”

“Well, you comin’?” says Hannibal, his hand on the switch. “There’s a leather jacket in it for you if it is. How’d you like to wear Insurrector as a fuckin’ coat?”

Newt’s jaw goes slack. “Seriously?” he whispers.

Hannibal’s teeth glitter when he smiles. “Yeah, kid. Seriously.”


	3. Skull Session

The seller turns out to be an ex-priest of the Church of the Kaiju. They meet him in the cathedral at Reckoner’s skull, after hours.

The cathedral is warm and intimate and sickeningly organic. Red and blue candles line the walls in ascending daises up to the engravings in the bone, and high above them, the delicate bones of Reckoner’s nasal passageway seem to fan out like Gothic arches. It’s difficult to hear the cacophony of Hong Kong at night in here. The bones dull down the noise.

Sometimes Newt wonders what Hannibal is thinking, and this is one of those times. He seems entirely at ease here, his hands in his pockets, golden teeth just barely glinting beneath his curled lip. His shoes are reflected brightly in the polished faux-ivory floor. He looks unkillable.

Newt, by contrast, is extremely killable, and growing more aware of it by the second. He hangs back behind Hannibal’s left shoulder, his equipment bag slung across his back and his arms preoccupied with his clipboard and instruments. He wore the lab coat to see if it would piss Hannibal off. It did, but not enough to stop him from giving Newt a gun. “Be careful with that,” he’d said. “It’s worth more than you are.”

It’s plated with gold and far too heavy, and holding it makes Newt feel incredibly cheap. He had tucked it into the back of his belt, having seen it done in movies, and it chafed uncomfortably as Newt followed Hannibal into the gaping mouth of the cathedral.

Hannibal brought a guard with him. A short, flinty-eyed man called Zhāng, with tanned skin and eyes like tiger’s eye opals. He follows closely behind them, silent and watchful. His leather jacket squeaks too loud in the enclosed space.

The seller turns out to be a heavyset Australian man with hair so blue it’s almost black. He waits for them up by the alter, arms folded, flanked by two of his own men. Newt swallows nervously as he recognizes M-guns in their hands. Heavy, wicked-looking things, with chambers that glow a bubbly toxic green.

The seller has a pendant hanging around his neck. An engraving of a kaiju ribcage, spread open and smeared with the blood of human infidels. Once a cultist, always a cultist. Newt wonders vaguely if drifting with a kaiju constituted the beatific vision.

Hannibal jerks his head in Newt’s direction. “My boy is gonna check it first, hope you don’t mind.”

“By all means,” says the seller. He gestures for his gunners to step aside, and they do, revealing a large, wheeled metal case behind them. It’s about the size and shape of a refrigerator on its side.

“I’ll just, yeah, excuse me, let me just,” Newt mutters, crossing the empty space between the two parties with his gaze fixed firmly on the floor. He sets his equipment down next to the container as quietly as he can, and slides back the heavy top with a grunt of exertion.

The kaiju tissue inside is wrapped up like a cake roll, and looks to weigh about the promised 200 pounds. It smells faintly of ammonia, and beneath that, Newt can trace the seawater scent of kaiju blue. Newt scribbles illegibly on his clipboard, _contaminated specimen,_ and snaps on his his latex gloves before running a hand along the cracked, marbled surface.

Insurrector had been bull-like in appearance, though you couldn’t tell that from so small a skin sample. Eight eyes, skin at least five inches thick, and innumerable bony protrusions of various sizes. None of that here, though the skin is cracked in places where the luminous veins would have shown through. Newt sets the clipboard aside and starts working his hands into the seam of the roll, peeling up the skin to work his scanner underneath it to check the toxicity.

He can hear Hannibal and the seller talking, their discussion growing a little more heated. Newt glances at them occasionally, trying to keep one eye on the men with the M-guns and the other on the task at hand. Hannibal’s voice is rising, and Newt instinctively shudders. How anyone can argue with that man is beyond him. It’s not like with Hermann. Arguing with Hannibal isn’t fun.

Newt can still remember that first phone call, all those years ago. He hadn’t dared argue then, either. Newt had woken up in the early hours of the morning to the sound of his phone vibrating insistently on the bedside table. His eyes were still stinging with the ache of too little sleep when he answered it.

 _“Hey, kid,”_ said a familiar voice. _“I want you and Gottlieb workin’ for me. My boys in the back room got fucked up by Otachi’s Baby, and I’m in the market for new ones.”_

“Holy shit, holy shit what the fuck,” Newt had stammered, sitting up in bed and fumbling for his glasses. “You’re dead, dude, you’re so fucking dead. I saw you die.”

_“Take a breath, son.”_

“I saw you die right there in front of me! It fucking ate you, dude!”

_“Do you want the job or not? Gottlieb’s already in, I want him doin’ my books.”_

“You seriously- wait, you got him? He’s already in?”

 _“Called him up earlier today and he had me negotiatin’ for a goddamn hour and a half,”_ Hannibal said, laughing. _“I’m not gonna be so generous with you, so listen up: I want you in the back room, studyin’ the kaiju specimens and delivering them to potential buyers. You can do your lectures in your off time, I really don’t give a shit, but when I snap my fingers, you better come runnin’. You’ll be like fuckin’ . . . Indiana Jones. That’s a thought that gets your ticker pumpin’, right? Kaiju Indiana Jones.”_

Newt’s eyes were watering from how long they’d been wide open. “Uh, well, man, yeah, but um, what exactly am I getting out of all this?”

_“All the dead kaiju bits you can handle, buddy.”_

“Dude,” Newt breathed. “I am _there._ ”

He kept true to his word, and Hannibal kept true to his. For four years now, this arrangement has gone on, and for the most part, Newt enjoys it.

He’s not enjoying it now. Not with the argument escalating only a few yards away, echoing in the cloistered, oppressive atmosphere of the bone cathedral.

Newt runs two fingers carefully under the membrane of the kaiju skin to check for consistency. His tablet is beeping insistently at him, letting him know the results of the toxicity scan. Newt checks it, then checks once more, just to be safe. Then he stands up.

“Hey,” he says loudly. “Um, Mr. Chau, this guy’s full of shit?”

The seller looks at him over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing. He’s breathing with his mouth open. Newt can hear it from across the room.

“What’s that, Geiszler?” says Hannibal in a mockingly calm voice.

“You can’t fucking pull one over on this guy, man!” Newt says, gesturing wildly at the seller. “It’s a fake! They rubbed it down with kaiju blue to trick the scanners. Guess what bitch, huh, it didn’t work!”

“The fuck did you think you were gonna do, buddy?” Hannibal snarls and _shit_ that’s a gun and Newt scrambles behind the metal case. He’s gonna _kill_ him, holy shit Hannibal’s going to kill the seller.

“H-hey hold on there, hold on,” the seller stammers. Newt carefully peers around the edge of the case. He can see all five of them, standing off in the center of the room. Zhāng’s got his gun pointed at one of the gunners, the seller’s got his gun on Hannibal, and fuck fuck fuck Newt can hear the low, staticky buzz of the M-guns charging up. There’s gonna be a shootout.

Newt draws his gun and holds it shakily in both hands. His latex gloves squeak against the gold plating. _Please Jesus don’t let me die here somebody save me_.

“Listen, it’s a good fake,” the seller is saying desperately, but he doesn’t point his gun away from Hannibal. “You can sell it off to anyone. They won’t be able to tell.”

“Geiszler could tell,” Hannibal says coldly, “and he’s an idiot.”

“Six doctorates,” Newt mutters under his breath. “Six goddamn doctorates.”

“Reckoner’s grace . . .” one of the gunners breathes. Newt can hear the fear in his voice.

“Hang on, boy,” says Hannibal, but before he can say more, the gunner’s hand slips.

Newt yelps in surprises as the M-gun goes off with a violent snap, and Zhāng gets punched in the left shoulder by a knot of toxic green ichor. Newt can smell the stench of it from across the room; Zhāng shrieks, his arm hanging limp and dead by his side, and empties three bullets into the gunner’s neck and chest.

The room explodes into chaos.

Newt ducks back behind the container and screams. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” He’s fumbling with the gun, but he’s blanking, he doesn’t know how to shoot, and he can hear Hannibal shouting and the sound of bullets chipping bone as they hit the cathedral ceiling.

“I’m gonna die,” Newt’s shaking all over, a cold sweat breaking out across his skin. “Hermann’s gonna kill me.”

Footsteps are approaching him fast. Someone wrenches the container aside and the second gunner is right there, his pupils blown wide with panic. Newt screams, tries to throw himself out of the way, but a shot from the M-gun hits him in the left leg and he falls hard on his side, frantically kicking to free himself. The slime is foul-smelling and thick as paste, gumming him to the floor with thick green strings. His leg is tingling and burning all at once; he can feel it going dead. He can’t move.

The gunner points the M-gun between Newt’s eyes.

Newt’s mouth has gone dry. His heart is pumping like the heart of a dying rabbit. His mind is spinning, going wild, throwing up nonsense words and intrusive thoughts and please don’t let me die, and somewhere between the firing of his synapses and the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears he can recall all those hours at the firing range with the Rangers, filling silhouettes full of holes, and people saying _what’s he doing here, like he’s ever gonna need it, guess if someone shoots Dr. Geiszler in the head we’ll know who to court martial . . ._

In one quick movement, Newt raises his weapon and shoots the gunner twice in the right arm, shattering his elbow in a spray of red.

The gunner howls like an animal and drops, the M-gun clattering across the floor. Newt stares at the gun in his own hand and drops it, laughing desperately. “Holy shit,” he laughs. “I can’t shoot. I can’t shoot but- holy shit, oh my God.”

The cathedral, which had so briefly dissolved into a hail of panicked gunfire, has fallen silent. Newt can hear a quiet dripping, and knows Hannibal’s work is done.

Newt falls onto his back, cracking his head dully against the floor, but he barely feels it. The phantoms of Hermann’s memories are still chasing themselves in circles around his brain. The world goes fuzzy at the edges, spinning faintly, as though he’s about to pass out. It had all happened so quickly. Newt jerks his leg feebly, but it’s gummed so thoroughly to the floor that he has to stay put. He’s lying on his side, watching Hannibal’s shoes jingle across the floor towards him.

“I’ll admit,” says Hannibal, stopping to stand above him, “this coulda been handled better,” He picks up the M-gun and pokes at Newt’s leg with the muzzle. Newt watches him rotate the cylinder twice to the right, and the green glow of the chambers gives way to a deep plum purple. “Hold still, don’t go twitchin’ all over the place.”

Newt squeezes his eyes shut tight. There’s a hiss, and a warm, buzzing sensation in his leg, and when he tries to move again he finds he slips free of the goo quite easily. It left dark green stains all up the leg of his jeans.

“I can’t feel my leg,” he says dully.

“Yeah,” says Hannibal. “That shit happens.”

He gives Newt a kick in the leg that’s sure to bruise, but Newt doesn’t feel it. He clambers to his feet, shaking his head when Zhāng offers him his good hand, and wobbles awkwardly on his feet. “What now?”

Hannibal inhales sharply through his teeth. Looks around him at the carnage, at the metal case, the cathedral floor smeared with blood and green ichor. “Well,” he says, drawing the word out. “I suggest we get the fuck out of here before somebody finds us.”

Newt nods vaguely. His head is ringing. He misses Hermann.

Hannibal walks out of the cathedral with every bit of confidence he had when he came in, Zhāng following close at his left shoulder. Newt trails behind them, his arms full of his own equipment, casting nervous looks behind him at every step.

 

It’s almost morning by the time Newt gets back to the lab.

His leg is still numb so he walks slowly, favoring it. The lab is dark at this hour, and absent the usual sounds of life. Only the low hum of electricity and heavy refrigeration equipment.

There’s a dark red door off to the eastern side of the lab, and Newt takes a moment to steel himself before opening it. He takes a deep breath, smiles brightly, and pushes it open.

“Hermann?” he says, all false cheeriness. “Are you up? It was awesome, dude, I can’t wait to tell you about it. Please be up?”

Their quarters are cramped, scarcely room for two people, but they had endured worse accommodations at the Shatterdome. Here at least Hannibal has a maid come in and tidy up twice a day, and they have their own bathroom. No windows, but Newt doesn’t mind that. Not in this city.

Newt can hear the shower running. He sheds his coat and hangs it up on a peg by the door, looking around at the darkened sitting room, the bathroom door, the bedroom off to the left. With all the red wood paneling and tight-fitting spaces, Newt can almost imagine it’s like living in the chambers of a kaiju’s heart.

The shower spray shuts off abruptly, and Newt perks up, hoping Hermann won’t notice the green stains all up his leg, or the way Newt’s shaking so bad he feels like crying. The door swings open and Hermann hangs halfway out, and Newt could almost sigh with relief because he looks _pissed,_ which means everything’s going to be okay.

“What happened?” he says sharply. Newt can see his dark eyes gleaming at him in the low light of the living room. “Nobody’s deigned to tell me anything.”

“Don’t freak out,” says Newt, “but I shattered a man’s elbow.”

“You . . . what?”

 _“I know!”_ Newt says, grinning in spite of himself. “It was fucking incredible, dude, you should’ve been there. I could _shoot._ I’ve never fired a gun in my life! It was you, I know it was, I know I must’ve picked it up from you. You can shoot and you didn’t tell me?”

Hermann, throughout the duration of Newt’s ramble, is silent. Newt realizes halfway through that Hermann’s hair is still wet from the shower, and he’s wearing one of the nice oriental bathrobes Hannibal bought them last year. The blue one, with Slattern’s face embroidered on the pocket in gold.

“What happened to your leg?” he says quietly.

“They had M-guns,” says Newt. Hermann shakily rubs the bridge of his nose with one hand. “It’s fine, though, Hannibal took care of everything. And I’ve almost regained feeling in my leg. The skin turned out to be a fake, which really busted Hannibal’s chops, let me tell you, but I mean . . . it’s fine, right? No harm, no foul. I mean the other guys, phew, they really, I mean that one guy who I shot in the arm, he got harmed, but for the most part . . .”

“Shut . . . shut _up,_ Newton . . .” Hermann groans.

Newt shuts up.

“This is most certainly not awesome, or in any way acceptable.”

“I’m-”

“I said be quiet.”

Newt falls silent again. He knows that voice, the No Arguments voice that means he’s about to be chastised for something serious. Newt has a No Arguments voice too, but his is louder, and involves a bit more breathless stuttering. Hermann’s is careful, and quiet, and scarier than Hannibal Chau.

Hermann makes his way across their tiny sitting room to stand in front of Newt, both hands on his cane in front of him, eyes narrowed. Newt stares at the ground. “You shouldn’t have gone to the drop,” Hermann says fiercely. “I told you to be careful and you weren’t. You could have been severely injured, perhaps even killed.”

Newt looks up at him, and is surprised to see that Hermann, who usually takes such pleasure in telling him off, looks stricken. He pauses, evidently waiting for Newt to say something for himself.

“I’m sorry?” says Newt, incredulous. “What was I supposed to do, not go with him? I thought Hannibal Chau was your new best friend.”

“You weren’t _prepared._ You didn’t _think._ ”

“I can handle myself in sketchy situations, dude. I know what I’m doing.”

“Newton,” Hermann says weakly, like a professor faced with an impossible student. He hooks one finger into the loop of Newt’s tie and gently tugs him forward. “Sometimes I don’t know what goes on inside your head . . .”

Newt tips forward, letting himself fall right into Hermann’s arms. He wraps himself tightly around Hermann and wishes he could just pour into him like water and never come out again.

Newt bumps his nose against Hermann’s neck. He smells like clean skin and eucalyptus. “I’m super gross right now,” he mutters.

“Yes, very much so.”

“I should shower.”

Hermann’s arms tighten around him, just briefly, before letting go. “You should.”

“That’s my robe, dude,” murmurs Newt, feeling the neckline between his fingers. “Yours is the yellow one.”

“For goodness’ sake, Newton,” Hermann sighs, kissing Newt on the forehead. “I’ll meet you in the bedroom.”

 

Newt takes the hottest shower he can reasonably endure, leaning against the handrail while he rubs himself down with eucalyptus soap. The bathroom mirror is all steamed up so he rubs a circle in the center of it and watches his reflection while he dries his hair.

Newt had hated hot showers, but after the drift, he adopted Hermann’s adoration for them. Hermann had recoiled at the scent of eucalyptus, but that was the only soap Newt liked, and after the drift it was the only soap Hermann cared to use. In Newt’s mind, their lives were as divided as their lab space had once been. Before the drift, and after the drift. For scarcely a minute, years ago, they had been as one. Now it was impossible to disentangle themselves from each other.

Newt leaves his towel crumpled on the ground- that’ll annoy Hermann in the morning- and takes Hermann’s robe off its peg on the wall. Canary yellow, bright as a sunrise. Newt looks terrible in yellow but he slips it on anyways, grinning to himself as he pulls his arms through the sleeves. Hermann knew how to _shoot._ Fucking incredible, and now that knowledge was Newt’s knowledge. Presumably it had been Newt’s knowledge for years, and he’d simply never had occasion to call upon it before.

As he leaves the bathroom he wonders, with a thrill of nervous anticipation, what other hidden skills of Hermann’s he might have locked away in his subconscious. He can’t tell Hannibal about it. That would feel almost obscene. This was his, and Hermann’s. No one else’s.

Newt nudges open the bedroom door and finds Hermann sitting on the edge of the bed, his robe slipping off one shoulder as he checks his phone. “Hannibal?” says Newt, testing the waters. He hopes it isn’t. If it is, Hermann might be dressed and gone before Newt can blink, and they won’t even have a night together after Newt’s long absence.

The ugly thought doesn’t have much of a chance to gestate before Hermann is putting his phone down, smiling in a long-suffering way. “I’m telling him to stop pestering me, if you must know. His friend with the bad bookkeeper will have to wait.”

Newt grins, leans forward to bump his forehead against Hermann’s temple. “I’m sorry I made you worry,” he says. Hermann gives him a look out of the corner of his eye, and Newt grins wider and slips down to kneel between Hermann’s legs. “Is there anything I can do to make it up to you? Anything at all, _schatzi?”_

Hermann twines a hand into Newt’s hair, scratching his scalp in that loving, perfectly condescending way that makes Newt weak at the knees. His eyes flutter closed as he leans forward into Hermann’s grip. He’s so fucking glad to be home again, to be _fussed_ over, finally. He’s one of modern academia’s rockstars, admired for having his shit together. But he doesn’t, not really, and Hermann is the only one who will fucking call him out on it.

“Your mouth is hanging open,” Hermann says fondly, giving Newt’s hair another little tug. “You look cheap.”

Newt groans, helpless with affection, and moves in closer to nuzzle against the silk of Hermann’s robe. He hears Hermann’s breath catch when he works his hand under the folds to stroke his cock. Newt has only ever known a tense and desperate silence from Hermann when they do this, punctuated by strained, sweet-sounding groans that make Newt ache between his legs.

Hermann’s cock is hot in Newt’s hand, hard and velvet-soft all at once. Newt laps lightly at the tip, licking up the precum that’s begun dripping there, before drawing his mouth up the length of his cock.

He looks up at Hermann and sees him with his head tilted back, his hand fisted tightly in the bedsheets while his other hand is just as tight in Newt’s hair. His skin is jewel-pale, and paler in places where there’s scarring. His breathing is as ragged as an athlete’s, and as Newt watches he looks down at him again, giving Newt’s hair a fierce tug as his hips buck slightly under Newt’s hand.

Newt starts tonguing at the head of his cock, and giving him firm, even strokes with his hand. He bobs his head along the length, first slowly, then faster, making up for a lack of skill with a relentless enthusiasm he knows Hermann pretends to dislike. He slips one hand into his own robe to palm at his cock, stroking himself once or twice, but he almost doesn’t need to because Hermann is so close already, he can feel it in his pulse, he can _taste_ it, and God, Newt’s already ready to come.

He takes Hermann’s cock in his throat, just deep enough to swallow around the sensitive head without choking, and feels his mouth flood with warm precum as a reward. “Fuck,” he grins, letting Hermann’s cock slip from his mouth long enough to mouth his way up the shaft again. He takes care to swallow loud enough for Hermann to hear. “I almost forgot how much you drip. That’s so inconsiderate, dude.”

Hermann snarls at him, actually _snarls,_ but his eyes are sparkling bright and his grip actually loosens in Newt’s hair. “I can ta-” he tries to say, but his voice cracks halfway through, and he has to cover his mouth. Finally, he breathes, “I can _taste_ it.”

Newt’s heart is in his throat, ecstatic, because he can feel it too. Just barely, the ghostly outline of that oneness they once shared. He can feel the sheets fisted tightly in his hand, he’s so fucking close, a warm, wet mouth against him, around him, he can _feel_ it, feel him, and Newt’s so close he’s going to spend himself on the floor like a teenager. Hermann’s hand clenches in Newt’s hair and he forces his head down hard, and they let out loud, low snarls of satisfaction when they come.

They spend themselves in unison, as always. They have never yet been able to do otherwise.

Newt rests his head against Hermann’s thigh, breathing hard, finally at the mercy of his own exhaustion. His mind feels quiet and clear. Dimly he’s aware of Hermann removing his glasses for him, and the world swims into a soft, sleepy fuzziness before his eyes.

“Remember when we first did this . . .” he mumbles, too blissed out to speak clearly.

“We didn’t leave our quarters for three days,” Hermann says softly. “I remember.”

Newt’s legs feel like jelly when he reluctantly pushes himself to his feet. He sheds his robe, leaves it in a pile on the floor and gestures for Hermann to scoot over. “Feel like I’m ready to pass out,” he says, worming his way under the covers and planting himself face-first into the pillow.

Hermann hums in agreement. Newt can hear him taking off his robe, and hanging it carefully on one of the bedposts before snuggling down next to him and throwing his arm over Newt’s waist.

“The skin was fake,” Newt murmurs, because he can’t remember if he told Hermann already and he doesn’t care. “I really wanted that leather jacket.”

“You’ll get one, dear.”

Then Hermann speaks so quietly Newt almost doesn’t hear it before he sinks down, down, down into sleep.

“. . . I’m glad you’re home.”

They sleep peacefully all night.


	4. Influence and Decline

_Late nights downstairs._

_His eyes are red and raw from staring at screens. The air smells like coffee and ozone. His brain is swimming with numbers._

_The coding is impossibly difficult. He doesn’t dare stand up, stretch his legs, use the loo. The moment he does, he knows the phones will begin to ring. The messages will pour in. Another one reached the surface today. Why aren’t you working faster. The silence of the basement is overwhelming. Nothing but the sound of his keyboard, magnified._

_He will never forget how loud that room hadn’t been._

_Teeth, gritted tight. Frustrated to the point of madness. He presses the bladed curve of his forehead against the Wall and pushes, and it splits like meat falling off a bone. He is in. He is through. The people are screaming. On the other side of the world, his father slowly lowers his mug._

_The Wall is still falling. His footsteps shake the earth. Why aren’t you working faster. The ocean vomits them up as quick as we deploy. Please, please, why aren’t you working faster._

_Then from the silence, noise. All at once, like a breaking dawn, a cresting wave, a blade of light drawn through a prism. Louder than the sound of the Wall as it fell, louder than the sound of his father’s mug must have been, clinking down on the countertop as he watched the Wall fall on international television._

_And it’s saying,_ “Are you awake? It’s cool if you’re not, but, I was kind of hoping you were.”

Hermann groans, and shifts a little in his seat. He pushes up his eye mask with one hand. “Yes, Newton,” he mumbles. “I am more or less awake.”

Newt is sprawled in the seat next to Hermann, agonizingly confined by the economic necessities of airplane seating. One boot up on the seat in front of him, the other scrunched painfully against the wall. He’s gesturing vaguely in the air, as though compelled to illustrate his own words. “I’ve been thinking, Herm, what kind of kaiju is this supposed to be? HC says we’re picking up some sort of horn specimen, something shed. But kaiju weren’t built to shed, there’s no reason for them to drop horns. The fuck kind of kaiju is this?”

Hermann rubs the tired ache out of his eyes, and tugs his mask off over his head. “I don’t know, Newton,” he says sleepily, adjusting his neck pillow a little more comfortably before settling in to watch the clouds go by in the window beyond Newt’s shoulder. “What do you think?”

 _“Well,”_ says Newt, clapping his hands together. “I’m glad you asked.”

His voice is obnoxiously loud in the enclosed space. Flying is usually an agony for Hermann- uncomfortable, hot, loud- but Newt is louder by far, and makes the little inconveniences of flying seem minor in comparison. Hermann’s eyes fall half-closed, still tired, as Newt’s voice devolves to white noise in the back of his skull. He gets lost in watching the sunlight through the scratched-up airplane porthole, and the way it seems to shatter where it touches Newt’s skin, illuminating him in reds and greens and blues. The colors of monsters.

“You are so out of it,” Newt grins, finally letting his hands drop. He begins fidgeting with the armrest instead. “I don’t have to keep talking, you know. I can shut up.”

“Don’t,” says Hermann quietly. “I apologize, please, continue what you were saying.”

“I have literally already forgotten,” Newt laughs. He takes off his ridiculous Buddy Holly glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. “Are we almost in Tokyo?”

“Three more hours.”

“I am going to lose my goddamn mind, dude,” he mutters, folding up his glasses and hanging them loosely from the neck of his tie. He settles in against Hermann’s side, his head resting on his shoulder. “Sorry. I know I exhaust you.”

Hermann nuzzles his nose against Newt’s soft hair and thinks, _you don’t exhaust me._

Flying exhausts him, though. Flying and airports. The taxing flight times, the dirty seats, the waiting. It’s a painful reminder of when he was young- God, how old had he been- and waiting in the airport, his stomach tying itself into knots. Waiting for a scrawled signature on a page to step off a plane and make himself a reality. _N. Geiszler_. Then _Newt._ Then _Dr. Newton Geiszler, PhD (I’m signing all my letters like that now dude.)_

How many letters had there been between them? Three years of passionate correspondence concerning the end of the world, losing himself in the perfect madness of Newt’s chicken-scratch handwriting. It was as though Newt had reached across the Atlantic to shake Hermann’s hand, and Hermann, stuck in a searing back-and-forth with his fool of a father over the breakfast table, had so longed to be understood.

Meeting Newt face to face had been a mistake.

Hermann had been sick with anxiety as he waited for Newt’s flight to arrive. Half of him wanted to run, and the other half had insisted he clean himself up a bit. Try to look a little more presentable for the man he knew Newt must be. Hermann wasn’t much to look at, but he could damn well make sure Newt looked twice.

Newt didn’t look twice.

He wandered into Hermann’s view amid a crowd of other passengers, with his backpack slung over his shoulders and his hair all stuck up at the back from sleeping on the plane. The cuffs of his jeans were rolled up above his boots. He had tattoos.

His eyes found Hermann and slipped right past him, looking for his new best friend. Then came the realization. And then, the flicker of doubt.

They hated each other at once. They hated beyond reason, and beyond rationality. That hate had never quite gone away.

Newt was a live wire when he was angry. A burning filament. An electromagnetic pulse that shut down Hermann’s every function, made him feel terribly old and terribly tame. Newt was self-destructive, and sarcastic, and he did not know how to suffer silently. He was everything Hermann was not, yet for all of that, Hermann had steadfastly refused to leave his side.

He gently brushes Newt’s hair out of his eyes, careful not to disturb this rare moment of peace. Touching Newt had been so difficult, once upon a time. It still is, when they’re in public. But here at least Hermann can turn his back to the aisle, and imagine they are alone. Alone enough to touch Newt, very gently, and feel safe while doing so.

“Thank you for coming out here with me, man,” Newt mumbles sleepily against Hermann’s shoulder. “It’s been what, three weeks since I got back? Cooped up in Hong Kong with nowhere to go, nothing to do but wait to do HC’s dirty work in Tokyo. He won’t even shell out for first class. I’m a rock star, I don’t deserve this treatment. I don’t know how you do it, Herm, I really don’t.”

“Unlike some of us, I do have places to go and things to do in Hong Kong.”

Newt brings his hand up to touch Hermann’s, just lightly, before quickly lacing their fingers together as though afraid Hermann will pull away. He rubs his knuckles along the gold of Hermann’s rings. “I dunno how I feel about this whole jewelry thing,” Newt muses, shifting a little in his seat to get a better look at Hermann’s hands.

“You like them, though?” Hermann asks. He tries to make it a statement but it comes out as more of a question. _I hope you do. I’m wearing them for you. You and your bloody rhinestones_.

“Yeah no, no, I do!” Newt insists. “I do. I totally do,” He worries his thumb against the ring with Hannibal’s seal on it, dipping his nail into the beds of the rubies. Then he squeezes Hermann’s hand. “Dude, you know what I think?”

“Hmm?”

“I think when we get to Tokyo, we should check into one of those love hotels.”

Hermann’s stomach drops. “For God’s sake, Newton.”

“No, hear me out. The drop is in an internet café in one of the dead districts, right? Those places have a _shit ton_ of love hotels, all automated. Come on,” Newt grins, pushing his forehead more insistently against Hermann’s shoulder. He hasn’t let go of his hand. “We haven’t been alone, really alone, in like months, dude. HC has a key to our room. We could . . . I dunno, we could get up to a lot of kinky shit in a love hotel. And the drop’s not till morning, Herm, let’s do it. Let’s _do_ it.”

Hermann stares at him, disbelieving. “Do you have any idea how . . . unhygienic, those places are, Newton? Particularly in a dead district?”

“Yeah but I’ve always wanted to go to one.”

“People will see us. They’ll _see_ us, Newton, and we’ll have no excuse.”

“No one’s going to see us, Herm. These places are totally anonymous. Plus,” Newt adds, grinning wickedly, “some of them have kaiju-themed rooms, dude. Especially in the dead districts, I bet,” Then his weight against Hermann’s shoulder is gone. Newt is bolt upright in his seat and already switching on his tablet, feverishly pulling up the app to pay for the wifi. “Mutavore’s your favorite, right?” he says. “The one that made your dad look like an ass on live TV?”

“I don’t have a favorite,” Hermann says quietly.

“This is gonna be so cool, man, trust me on this one.”

“You’re a perfectly revolting excuse for a human being,” Hermann mutters. “I enjoyed working in your absence. The place ran quite smoothly.”

“Quite boring-ly you mean,” says Newt, nudging Hermann with his elbow. Hermann elbows him back, and tries not to think about Tokyo.

 

Tokyo’s dead districts live up to their name at night. This one is particularly haunting, and Hermann, shivering on the sidewalk while Newt checks his phone, finds himself struck with an intolerable melancholy as he observes the silent streets.

Above them, the sky is blue-black with soiled clouds. The streets are empty here, understandably so, and a few empty bike racks gleam like picked-clean ribs on the sides of the roads. Electronic billboards glow from high above them, some of them stuck on one image, others still as brightly functional as ever, advertising everything from hairspray to life insurance. No sound, though. Most of the speakers have been ripped out. Hermann can see hanging clumps of cables dangling like roadkill beneath some of the neon signs.

“All automated. All dead,” Hermann says. His voice, quiet though it is, feels uncomfortably loud out here. He can hear the wind whistling through the alleys.

“Yup,” Newt says warily, and Hermann feels a sharp stab of concern mixed with smug superiority when he realizes Newt is uncomfortable too. “It’ll liven up in the morning, though.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure it will, Newton. I’m sure the _dead district_ will liven up just fine.”

“You know what, shut up,” says Newt, setting off down the street with his faux-crocodile suitcase rolling behind him. Hermann, not eager to be left behind, follows, and Newt slows his pace so Hermann can keep up. “I think this place is cool.”

“We are going to get mugged.”

“I’ll fight them.”

“With what?” Hermann sneers. “The Jaeger that you don’t have?”

“I learned some shit abroad, man,” says Newt as he crosses in front of an alley’s mouth, black and echoing in the neon-lit streets. Hermann can see a number of vending machines with glossy, glowing panels lined up side by side along the alley wall. “I learned tai chi.”

“If we die out here because you wanted to have intercourse in a kaiju-themed hotel room I will personally find you in the drift and kill you a second time,” says Hermann, just as he crosses the mouth of the alley and a girl projects into being in front of him, all fractured pixels and smokey beams of light. “Bloody hell!” he curses, stopping so abruptly that he nearly loses his balance.

 _“Kon’nichiwa . . .”_ she says brightly, raising one glowing hand. _“Anata wa sawayakana dorinku o shitai to . . .”_

Newt’s hand dips through her pink hair and she zaps out of existence again. He’s biting his lip, trying not to laugh. “It’s just a vending machine,” he says lightly.

“I hate this city. If I left you here and went back to Hong Kong I would feel nothing.”

“Look, it’s just up ahead,” says Newt, gesturing toward the next building over with his phone. “We’re right there. We’re literally there. And the drop’s practically around the corner from the hotel.”

“Charming,” Hermann says drily. “A most inviting presentation, if I may say, I do love that bare concrete, sparking neon look.”

“Love hotels don’t have to be inviting on the outside, dude, they just have to be cool on the inside. Cool and hopefully clean and _definitely_ a little creepy given where we are.”

Hermann looks over his shoulder one last time, trying to catch a glimpse of the sky between the tangled wires and silent, hazy screens. A single piece of trash skitters across the sidewalk like a dead animal back from the grave. It’s an awful place; no wonder Hannibal had set the drop here. This is the kind of thing Hannibal likes. Dead animals and dead neighborhoods.

Hermann ducks back into the lobby and shivers, wishing he’d brought his coat. Newt is up by the front desk, attempting to make small talk with the two automaton girls standing behind it. They reel out stock phrases, what Newt likes to call “NPC speech,” and occasionally tilt their spindly, squeaking necks.

Hermann shoves one hand into his pocket, the other clenched tight around the head of his cane as he looks around. The silence outside is unnerving, but the silence of the hotel lobby is even more so. The automaton girls behind the desk have a bone-white, half-finished look to them, like they haven’t been painted properly. Newt pays on a smudged touchscreen, and the girls bow to him jerkily, one after the other, and promise him complete anonymity and security.

“These are terrible robots,” Hermann mutters under his breath.

He’s gratified when Newt lets out a snort of laughter. “You could do better.”

“I have done better.”

Newt bumps lovingly against Hermann’s side as they made their way to the lift, and that’s almost enough to make Hermann smile. The pleasure of Newt’s attention is never pure. It must come, by necessity, with a hundred disclaimers. _He wants you. Don’t let him down. Look, his eyes are already wandering._

Newt punches the button for their floor and says nothing as the lift doors slide closed. The moment they do, hissing faintly in a way that reminds Hermann wistfully of the Hong Kong Shatterdome, Newt presses him up against the wall, kissing Hermann’s neck, his cheekbones, anything he can reach. “Well,” says Hermann, baring his teeth against Newt’s mouth. “It really doesn’t take much to wind you up, does it. One long flight and you’re sparking like an overloaded plug.”

Newt laughs and lays another bruising kiss against Hermann’s mouth. “Lay off me, man, I’m young, I’m allowed to be horny.”

“Not that young anymore,” says Hermann, which makes Newt groan in frustration even as he mouths wetly at the curve of Hermann’s throat. A real smile tugs at the corner of Hermann’s mouth. “Have you thought about your birthday yet?”

“God, no.”

“You’re like a fourteen year old boy, Newton. Forty is a milestone, you ought to let yourself grow into it.”

“You were an old man at fourteen, Herm, don’t tell me to act my age,” Newt scoffs.

Hermann doesn’t deny it. He lets out a long, low sigh and slips his hand up the back of Newt’s shirt, feeling out the tattoos he knows are there. They had been so _young,_ once, and this skin had yet to be inked. _How old were we, in the airport that day? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? Children._

_How we hated each other._

Hermann can feel Newt grinning against his neck as his hands, clumsy and eager, fumble with Hermann’s belt. “I am so sleep deprived right now.”

Hermann keeps Newt pinned firmly against him, his arms tight around his waist, which Newt takes as an invitation to squirm and struggle. Hermann grips his hair tight and bends Newt’s head back, just to get him to _stop_ long enough to let himself be kissed. “It’s always a battle with you,” Hermann mutters. “Get off me, we’ve reached our floor.”

“Mmm, no,” Newt hums. Hermann can feel his teeth now, nipping at his throat, like Newt wants to see how far he can go before he breaks the skin.

Hermann sighs and moves his hands up to Newt’s neck, gripping him as tight as he dares without choking him. He traces the long, silky tattoo of Otachi’s tongue with one finger. _“Down, boy,”_ he says firmly, and Newt backs off. Hermann can feel Newt’s rabbit-pulse under his hands. He’s almost vibrating with excitement.

“How long have we been at our floor?” Newt whispers hoarsely.

“Several minutes.”

“Oh,” Newt coughs. “Oh,” Hermann lets him go and Newt rubs his neck. “We’re down there, somewhere,” he says, gesturing with his keycard. He looks flushed and breathless.

Hermann lets himself feel smug, just for a moment.

 

Their room is just as tacky and dreadful as Hermann had feared it would be. The atrocious blue lighting is giving him a headache.

“This place is so cool, man, _look_ at this shit,” says Newt, and he’s already off to test the softness of the mattress. He runs his fingertips along the matte-black dresser by the wall, cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of himself in one of the full-length wall mirrors. Hermann straightens out his shirt, still rumpled from that brief indulgence in the lift, and watches Newt move around, touching everything in the room and talking all the while. The decor is unbearably _thematic,_ exactly the kind of flashy, rockstar kitsch that Newt enjoys. Everything is scales, horns, and cracked blue veins. The lighting is so dark, so blue, that it reminds Hermann of the cheap music videos Tendo kept texting him in the Shatterdome. Jittery, low frame-rate monstrosities of Newt in clubs as a teenager, playing in the band he was ready to quit college for.

Newt picks up one of the kaiju plushies on the bed and squeezes it in both hands. It makes a squeaking noise, and he holds it up for Hermann’s inspection. “Hi Herm,” he says, falsetto. “I’m Mutavore and I think your dad’s Wall is stupid and dumb and I’m gonna eat it.”

Hermann wonders if he looks as murderous as he feels. “Put that down,” he says dully, opening the bathroom door. “I’m taking a shower.”

He steps into the bathroom and steps out of it again, just as quickly.

“The toilet’s in a _cell_ , Newton,” he says, too taken aback to bother shouting. “It’s in a _cell._ ”

Newt bounce-rolls across the bed and opens the drawer in the bedside table, feeling around. “You never know what people are gonna be into, dude.”

“And I suppose we’re not going to be talking about _this,_ ” Hermann gestures at the headboard of the bed.

Newt glances at it, then looks over his shoulder at Hermann. “It’s fine, dude, don’t worry about it,” He sits up, his attention already on the dresser drawers. “Those’ll be full of sex toys. I mean, I’m not into sex toys, but like, is it bad that I’m a little curious? What kaiju sex toys look like? You could probably do some serious damage to someone with one of those. I mean you could really tear a man in two.”

“Don’t worry about it?” Hermann says incredulously. “Don’t worry about it?”

Newt sighs, looks at the headboard again. The molding depicts Kaiceph, mouth open, teeth bared. Newt reaches up and runs his hand along one of the broad, plastic horns. “It’s fine, dude,” he says, squinting at one of the staring marble eyes. “It’s just a kaiju bed like any kid would have.”

“And I’m supposed to get it up with this creature staring at me all the while?”

“Just ignore him then!”

“He’s looking _right at me_ , Newton.”

“He’s friendly, dude.”

“No he’s not.”

“He just wants to give you a hug.”

 _“Newton!”_ Hermann yells. _“I don't want to do this here!”_

Newt stares at him, blinking slowly. Hermann feels a hot rush of satisfaction at the thought that he’s scared him.

Nothing is ever simple with Newt. By now Hermann has learned to budget for Newt’s whims, both financially and emotionally, but nonetheless his “good ideas” continue to rip through him like electricity through battery acid. Hermann is no stranger to organized chaos- he had three siblings, after all- but it continued to unnerve him, to _infuriate_ him, that a man of Newt’s age and intelligence could carry on so blinded by his own brilliance that he fails to hear when Hermann tells him to _slow down, this is unacceptable._

Hermann had been taught to slow down. To dress properly, to stand as straight as he was able, to articulate his ideas cleanly and clearly. “Just . . . slow down,” Hermann snarls. He presses his fist against his own forehead and closes his eyes, trying to calm himself. He’s thinking too fast. He’s becoming too much like Newt. “ _Slow down._ ”

The anger makes his head spin, sometimes. Unsure if it’s his own anger or Newt’s. He’s struggling to talk himself down from the ledge of his frustration, even as Newt scrambles off the bed with a sudden jolt of movement and begins to pace. “I, I, I, I’m sorry,” he stammers. He sounds exhausted. “It’s fine. I get it. I mean, it’s a little weird. I’m a little weird. Sorry.”

“Don’t you ever think,” Hermann growls, eyes still closed, head still lowered. “Don’t you ever think about anything, bright as you are.”

It’s all building to a head at once, all of it, weeks and months of tension and anxiety flooding into him all at once and Hermann never used to be like this, never used to jump from mood to mood with such alarming regularity. Something else he stepped in in Newt’s brain and tracked into his own. He’s getting angrier, and Reason, his only companion for so long, can’t talk him out of it. It feels like being tugged, head first, into another shouting match.

“I thought you liked Mutavore, anyway,” Newt says. He’s rubbing his wrists, and eventually unbuckles his watch out of frustration and almost throws it across the room at the bedside table.

“I hate Mutavore,” Hermann whispers, his voice shaking. “I _detest_ kaijus, Newton. I gave more than a decade of my life to the Jaeger Program. I was disowned. I lost my fiancé. Through it all I have maintained some semblance of dignity, which you make it very difficult to maintain. I make a lot of sacrifices for you, dear, a lot of indulgences, but I’m not going to make this one.”

“Could’ve said that before I booked the room, huh,” Newt sneers. “Could’ve said that before we made out in the elevator, huh.”

“I’m a criminal because of you, Newton. I could have tenure at any university I choose, but I’m a criminal, _for you_. Yet somehow, I still manage to care what people think of me, which you will _never_ understand. Look at you.”

“That’s all I think about!” Newt all but screams. “That’s all I think about every day! All the time, you fucking- fucking- that’s all I think about! It’s just a fucking room!”

“This isn’t,” Hermann says, stumbling over the words. He has to pause for a moment, take a deep breath, turn away for a moment and cover his mouth with his hand. “This isn’t about the room, Newton, this isn’t- this is about so many things. Give me a moment, I’m having trouble thinking.”

“Me too,” Newt says weakly. “I’m not . . . I’m not sure whether I’m thinking my thoughts or yours.”

“Or a monster’s.”

“I hate it.”

“Undeniably,” Hermann mutters. “I hate it too.”

He closes his eyes, listens to the sound of his blood rushing in his ears. The anger, hot and throbbing in his heart, seems to die down slowly, like an engine that’s been switched off. He can hear nothing for a while but the sound of Newt’s pacing.

“Can we start over again,” Newt says, very quietly.

Hermann nods shakily. “Yes. Yes, I think that would be best.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I should apologize. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

He turns and sees that Newt has sat down on the edge of the bed. He’s picking at the faux-scale duvet cover. “Just to be clear,” he mutters, not looking at Hermann, “it’s not, you’re not, I mean, you do want to bang me in general. Just not here and now, anymore.”

“Yes,” says Hermann. He sits down on the other side of the bed and winces slightly at the effort. He leans his cane up against the wall. “That’s exactly it.”

“Yup,” Newt buries his face in his hands. “Yup yup yup. God, I’m such an asshole.”

“Don’t be stupid, Newton.”

Newt snort derisively and takes his glasses off to rub the bridge of his nose. “Are you gonna want to tape a line down the middle of our bed?”

“No,” says Hermann. He puts his arm carefully around Newt’s waist, and to his relief, Newt allows himself to be scooted backwards to settle against Hermann’s side.

“Good.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck is wrong with us?” Newt asks. “I ask strictly out of scientific curiosity.”

Hermann frowns, and leans over to kiss the top of Newt’s head. “I’ve been wondering that more and more lately,” he says bleakly. “Perhaps minds such as ours were never intended to be linked. The effects have been . . . long-lasting.”

“Pretty bleak hypothesis, Dr. Gottlieb.”

“I’ve had a rather bleak evening, Dr. Geiszler.”

Newt lets out a little sigh that’s almost a laugh and flops onto his back, staring up at Kaiceph’s curving horns. “I’m going to sleep,” he says. “The drop’s early tomorrow. Gotta get that energy, might get shot at again.”

“Don’t say things like that,” Hermann says, wearily standing up and beginning to undress. “Get up, you need to change.”

“Too tired, too residually pissed,” says Newt, already peeling back the covers. “I’m sleeping like this.”

“You’re still wearing your boots.”

“Yeah, Einstein, I know.”

Hermann sighs, but makes no further attempt to talk to him. After he’s changed he slips into bed next to Newt and tries to ignore the plastic fangs casting their shadows over their faces. He thinks briefly about rolling to face away from him, unsure if Newt would welcome his face or his touch right now, but after a moment, he sees Newt shift towards him, ever so slightly. Hermann opens his arms, and Newt creeps forward into them, pressing himself flat up against Hermann’s chest and stomach.

“Can I put my head on your chest,” he mumbles.

“Of course,” says Hermann. He lets Newt tuck his head under his chin, and stares at the cracks in the mirror until he sleeps.


	5. El Psy Congroo

The drop point was an internet café at the corner of a poorly-marked intersection. Outside, the clammy morning air shone with a faint mist, and what little sun gleamed through the cloud cover seemed muted by the billboard screens. The district had, despite Newt’s assurance, failed to liven up.

Hermann sits by the window, his leg stretched out in front of him to ease its early morning ache, and watches for any sign of trouble. He drinks his coffee mouthful by scalding mouthful, in an effort to distract himself. Newt is sitting across from him, balancing his chair on two legs as he leans back. His medical bag is shoved under his seat and he has his boot hooked around Hermann’s ankle under the table. It’s a rare, quiet morning for both of them. Neither feel like talking.

Hermann watches a black Honda drive down the street and pass them, without slowing down. He takes another sip of coffee. The café is vacant, as he knew Hannibal had intended. The ventilation rattles loudly in the walls, as though something’s crawled up there and been trapped. The ceiling lights are black with dead insects. The machines behind the counter dispense coffee, tea, and beer. All in all it seems like a good place to be murdered.

Newt slaps the armrests of his chair with a sudden burst of movement. “Well, I’m gonna try one of those pachinko machines. You got a few hundred yen on you?”

“Honestly, Newton,” Hermann sighs, but his heart isn’t in it, so he digs around in his pocket for a moment and comes up with a handful of 100 yen coins. “I was enjoying the silence.”

Newt, who knows more than anyone when Hermann is lying, smiles and takes the money. He reaches over as he passes and slides Hermann’s sunglasses down, just enough to kiss the bridge of his nose. “Just pretend I’m not here,” he says, grinning wider when Hermann waves him off in mock agitation.

Hermann pushes his sunglasses back up and hopes Newt doesn’t see how pink he’s gotten around the face and neck. “I’m only wearing these ridiculous things to put your complaints to rest, I hope you know.”

Newt settles on the machine closest to the door, the big one with green accents and the grotesque cartoon aliens decorating the face. “Safety measure, dude. We’re already banking on them not knowing who we are, right? Don’t you think people might be weirded out by two dudes with matching fucked-up eyes?”

The pachinko machine comes alive with the cacophonous rattle of ball bearings. Hermann takes his sunglasses off and turns them over and over in his hands. The lenses are tinted gold, and mirrored. They’re almost as tacky as Newt’s.

“They’re terribly flash,” he says archly. “The same thing would be accomplished with an eye patch.”

“You can’t have a cane _and_ an eye patch, dude. Think of my libido.”

Hermann snorts and puts his sunglasses back on. For the next few minutes he divides his attention between the street outside and Newt’s feverish battle with the pachinko machine, until Newt finally says, not looking at him, “Did, uh, did you-know-who buy you that?”

“Hmm? What was that?”

“You know.”

Hermann stares at him. Newt grimaces, ostensibly at the pachinko machine.

“The suits,” he says finally. “The suits, the all-black, fitted suits.”

“Ah,” says Hermann, looking down at himself. He tugs the hem of his jacket, adjusting it slightly. _He noticed._ “Yes, he did. Our benefactor likes me to maintain a certain image.” _You look good. He noticed._

“Uh-huh,” says Newt. He slaps the pachinko button, hard. “That’s a really good look for you, Herm. You look great. It’s a great image.”

“Thank you, dear,” Hermann says warmly.

He takes another sip of his coffee, watching the movement of Newt’s tattooed arms as he works the machine. He’s already won almost half his ball bearings back. “He really likes you,” Newt tosses the words carelessly over his shoulder. “Any, uh, any idea why?”

“He’s shown me a certain amount of favor, yes,” Hermann admits. He sets down his cup. “I work hard for him. A good deal harder than I’d like. But fortunately, he recognizes the sacrifices I’ve made for him, and for you. I think he admires my competency.”

The lights on the pachinko machine flash twice, then go out. The last of the ball bearings rattle down across the pegs. Newt slaps the side of the machine with a frustrated grunt, then turns away from it and hurls himself into his seat across from Hermann. Hermann at once bumps his shoe against Newt’s under the table, and Newt thankfully doesn’t pull away.

“What’s gotten into you?” Hermann says, frowning. “I’ll give you more coins for the machine.”

Newt’s eyes are unreachable behind the blue tint of his sunglasses. He glances out the window, then back at Hermann. “So do you like what we’re doing? This whole Hannibal Chau thing.”

“Keep your voice down,” says Hermann sharply, although they are alone. “And yes, I do.”

“Yeah, I’m . . . glad,” says Newt. “Really glad, actually. I just wanted to make sure. You’re doing very well for yourself. Looking less Alan Turing these days and more . . . JRPG villain.”

“Thank you,” says Hermann, perplexed. “I think.”

“I’ve been thinking, you know, lately we’ve-” Newt says, but he’s distracted by something out on the street before he can finish. “Hey, look. Those people are staring.”

Hermann ducks his head on instinct, tries to make himself look smaller than he is. There are three people outside, walking slowly past the café, peering in. One of them reaches the door and pushes it open, cautiously entering and looking around. The other two follow. A heavyset young man with a code-locked case under his arm, a laptop bag, and a band tee half-tucked into his pants. A tall, waspish-looking boy with thin wrists and unkempt hair. A girl with sneakers that flash pink and blue when she walks. They’re clustered together on the thresh hold, wary until Newt gestures them closer, and Hermann realizes they’re afraid of them.

 _These are our contacts,_ he thinks. They look far too young. Children, almost. Hermann feels a creeping sense of unease prickle at his spine. The gun tucked into his jacket feels uncomfortably heavy, but he didn't dare come without it. For Newt's sake, he had to be prepared.

The tall one steps forward- the leader, evidently- and bows cautiously to Newt, then to Hermann where he sits. Hermann inclines his head. Newt bows back. “Talk about Future Gadget Lab,” he mutters to Hermann out of the corner of his mouth.

“You’re the people we’re here to meet?” says the tall one, in clear, slow English.

“Yeah, that’s us,” says Newt. He gestures to the chairs clustered around their table. “We’re just here to check out what you’re selling, make sure it’s legit and all. You good with that?”

“Yeah. Yes,” says the tall one, glancing at his companions. The heavyset one sits first, and then the girl. The tall one sits down at the same time Newt does, and gestures at his friend with the case. “Show him. Our names are-”

“Ah,” Hermann says sharply. “No names.”

The tall one nods nervously, licks his lips. “Go on,” he says to the heavy one. “Show them.”

He slides the box across the table and Newt stands, adjusting his glasses before snapping on a pair of latex gloves. “Code?” he says shortly.

“1048.”

The lock buzzes for a moment before clicking open. Newt opens the box and inspects the contents. Then he gives Hermann a pained look that Hermann knows all too well.

“Yeah, I’ll, uh,” he says wearily. “I’ll take a look at this.”

Hermann can tell Newt’s already anticipated the flight home, empty-handed. He glances over at the contents. Inside, heavily refrigerated, are large folds of what looks like satin. The sight makes him involuntarily recoil; it’s wet in some places and furred in others, like a scalp, or a knot of rotting tissue. Newt seems unbothered, damn him, and gets his hands into it at once, examining the underlying membrane. Eventually he pulls out his tablet and medical bag, setting them both on the table next to him.

“So, who came up with this?” he says distantly, focusing on the task at hand. The heavy one says something vague about high tide, but Hermann barely hears him, distracted by watching Newt press down sharply into the tissue, examining the rate of decay.

The medical sciences, as they pertain to kaiju, seem like little more than guesswork to Hermann. Newt assures him, often and loudly, that it is not. Hermann can’t abide guesswork, has no patience for organic science. Numbers are the same in this world or the next. Newt’s field seems to be nothing but making exceptions, and accounting for variations.

Hannibal’s contacts are watching them with looks of curious trepidation. _Future Gadget Lab,_ Hermann thinks wryly. He’s not sure why it’s funny- only that Newt seems to think it is- and that’s enough to amuse him. He leans forward in his chair and the tall one leans back, and it’s only then that he realizes they’re afraid of him.

The realization surprises him, though he keeps his face impassive so as not to give it away. Newt is still talking, something about antlers, but the tall one’s eyes aren’t on him. They’re fixed on Hermann, who has barely said a word over the whole meeting. Hermann follows the realization to its natural conclusion.

_He thinks I’m Hannibal’s man, through and through. He doesn’t know what I’m capable of._

His cane is under the table; they haven’t seen it. Hermann smiles, trying to look friendly, and the girl shrinks back in her chair. _Very well then. I’ll play Hannibal’s man, for now._

There’s a sharp snapping sound and Hermann almost jumps in his seat. Newt is ripping off his gloves, looking murderous. “Where did you get this? Be fucking straight with me, okay?”

“I told you,” the heavy one says, scouting his chair back as though afraid of an outburst. “It washed up, on the-”

“Uh-huh!” Newt stammers, slamming his hand down on the table. “Washed up at high tide, sure, sure, sure! And you just happened to stumble across it? Buddy,” he says breathlessly, turning to Hermann. “This is antler velvet. These are scraps of antler velvet, and they’re definitely from kaiju. They’re real, alright? They’re not bullshit.”

Hermann’s mouth goes dry. He nods once, and adjusts his grip on his cane. There’s no point in arguing with him- he knows Newt’s not wrong. For all his carelessness, Newt is never wrong.

“So, uh, you wanna elaborate on this?” Newt says, pushing the specimen aside and leaning over the table. “Because there are no antlered kaiju. None. So tell me where the fuck you got this, right?”

“We _told_ you,” says the heavy one through gritted teeth. “It washed up on the shore. Tons of this stuff. Bits and pieces and scraps.”

Newt laughs wildly, and rips off his sunglasses. “Oh yeah? And you just _happened_ to be there to pick it up? Three kids with a dream and Hannibal Chau’s phone number? Holy _shit,_ dude.”

Hermann stands up. The sound of his chair screeching against the floor makes all three of them jump in their seats. “You heard him,” he says calmly. “Tell us exactly how you found this specimen.”

The girl jerks her head, rocking back and forth in her chair. “Give it to them,” she mutters, her eyes downcast. “Show them. It’s for real. We promise it’s for real.”

The heavy one hesitates, but moves when Hermann narrows his eyes at him. He fumbles with the buckle on his laptop bag and pulls out a flat, heavy-looking military laptop. Hermann recognizes it at once; the PPDC crest stamped into the metal, and the pop art Virgin Mary sticker peeling off the top.

“We picked it up from some guys we know,” the tall one mutters. “It’s J-tech. Really. It used to be at-”

“The Hong Kong Shatterdome, I am aware,” Hermann growls. He takes it roughly from the heavy one’s hands and opens it. It powers on at once, and Hermann gets confirmation of what he already knows. It’s one of Tendo Choi’s old J-tech hookups, half jury-rigged broadcasting software and half pictures of cats Tendo doesn’t own. “Aspiring Hannibal Chaus, are you? Got this off the black market, I expect. The damn fool didn’t bother taking it with him when he went back to America.”

He’s dimly aware that Newt has fallen silent, but for the moment, he’s too busy pulling up the Pan Pacific sea beacons, still active on the broadcasting network. Four years since the last kaiju attack, and still they haven’t been dredged up yet. Too useless to engage with, too expensive to scrap. Still beaming out information to a world that isn’t listening anymore.

“How long have you been watching the sea beacons?” Hermann says, not expecting an answer. He doesn’t get one. Or maybe he does, but he can’t hear it. Not over the roaring of his own blood in his ears.

The readout isn’t even encrypted. How could it be- Tendo liked to keep things simple. A million lines of data reduced to a simple list of specs, something he could rattle off to Pentecost while his mind was elsewhere. According to the Serizawa Scale, kaiju are measured by water displacement, toxicity levels, and ambient radioactivity. There’s a blip on the radar, at the bottom of the Pacific. A blip that can’t be faked, or misconstrued. It’s vast.

There’s two of them.

“We thought we were reading it wrong,” says the tall one, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “It should be . . . it should be encrypted, but whoever used it during the Crisis didn’t bother to encrypt anything.”

“Two of them,” Hermann says, very calmly.

“. . . Yeah.”

“Small. Not even Category I. But there are two of them.”

“There’ve been . . . bits . . . falling off one of them,” the girl mutters. She’s clenching and unclenching her hands in her lap. “We think . . . we think . . .”

“We don’t know how they got here,” the tall one blurts out. “We don’t even know if they’re _alive_. They’re not moving. At least, the readout doesn’t seem to say that they’re-”

“They’re _dormant_ ,” Hermann snarls, and he realizes his hands are shaking even as he types. “Imbecile. If they were dead they would have rotted, poisoning the- the-”

He stops. Closes his eyes, takes a single deep, shuddering breath. The closing of the Breach, the fracturing of the line between worlds. The explosion that brought about the final collapse. The detritus. The _shrapnel._

“They could have passed through,” he murmurs, his eyes still closed, trying and failing to think rationally. “In the chaos, the confusion . . . two of them, small and incomplete, they could have _slipped through_ . . . but how . . . how . . .”

He feels a fear that is not his. An anger and a pain and a piss-your-pants fear that floods his veins with adrenaline so fast he has to grip the table to stop himself from bolting. Next to him, Newt stands up and shoves his chair back with a sudden violence. “I’m going for a walk,” he says, his voice high and manic.

The sound of the door crashing closed behind him is what spurs Hermann to action. He slams the laptop shut and lets out a short, sharp scream before putting a hand to his forehead. “Do you have _any idea!”_ he yells, bitterly enjoying the look of terror in their contact’s eyes as they stand up and stumble back against the window. “Do you have _any idea_ what you have done by keeping this from the world! Suppose they should wake up! _Suppose they should wake up!_ ”

His heart is seizing up in his chest. He feels like he’s going to faint. Newt’s panic and Hermann’s anger are at war inside his skull, and it feels like standing beneath a wave about to crash.

 _“Geh raus!”_ he snaps, and though they don’t understand him, something in his face has them scrambling for the door. _“Geh raus oder ich werde etwas tun, das ich bereue!”_

The door slams so hard it rattles in its frame, and Hermann is alone, gasping for breath and struggling to think clearly. His brain is full of thoughts and feelings that are not his own. He feels a sudden desperate desire to sleep, or to break his knuckles against a wall, or to press his forehead against Newt’s and scream until he expires.

“Selfish bastard,” he rages, wrenching open Newt’s medical bag and forcing Tendo’s laptop into it. “Leaving me here, _alone,_ Newton, _alone!_ Gone off to panic _without me._ ”

The thought of Newt alone in a foreign city makes him sick. He shoves Newt’s bag under his arm and limps out onto the street- unsurprisingly, Newt’s nowhere in sight.

“Of-bloody-course he’d go back to the kaiju room,” Hermann mutters. Then he puts his hand to his mouth and laughs, because there are _kaiju_ now. Two new ones, sleeping at the bottom of the Pacific. And no one knows about it but him and Newt, and three Japanese punks with big ideas and Hannibal Chau’s phone number.

 

The room is empty when he gets there. The same garish blue lighting, the same dressers fully of gimmicky sex toys. It’s as though the last twelve hours haven’t happened.

Hermann tosses Newt’s medical bag onto a nearby chair and collapses into bed. The tendons in his leg are screaming at him for the rough treatment. He hasn’t been doing his physical therapy. Newt’s supposed to take care of that for him, suppose to shout down his protestations until Hermann finally submits and lets himself be put through his paces.

Newt’s not here. He had plenty of time to arrive. He’ll be here. He’ll show up.

 

He doesn’t.

 

Hermann rinses his face with the cold water from the tap. He’s still red and blotchy from shouting, but the cold water shocks him into a kind of clarity. He can feel things later. He can sweat and scream and shrink into himself later.

Right now, he needs patience. Clarity. The focus required to fixate on a problem, deliberating over it for days or more, before arriving at the proper solution. He tries to convince himself that it’s not so difficult a question, that the answer is just there, somewhere, in his mind. _Where would Newt go to suffer. Where would he go, if not here. To me._

Hermann can remember being a child, trembling all over and stuttering through his words. The other children seemed like monsters, back then. Huge and insurmountable and moving according to some mindless directive that Hermann didn’t understand. He could remember hiding out in the back of the library, his arms around his knees. Reading Shel Silverstein before he gave up poetry, dismissing it as lies, half-truths, sentimental platitudes without the golden certainties of facts to back them up.

 _No,_ Hermann thinks. He closes his eyes, runs a hand through his hair. _Further, further back. Until it’s not me._

He can remember, with great clarity, the clammy feet of a salamander in his palm. Catching it with his left hand as it crawled off his right, and on and on and on. A Game Boy Color, _his_ Game Boy Color, digging into his thigh whenever the boat rocks. His uncle, telling him that it’s not his fault. His mother loves him. Really. _Look at this one, this one’s a bowfin. Amia calva._

Hermann opens his eyes again.

It’s obvious, really.

He’s surprised he didn’t see it before.

 

The dead district slowly gives way to a tourist district, and then beyond that, the waterfront. Forging a path between the two districts is, to Hermann’s mind, not unlike chasing the dawn. The city seems to wake up around him as he first passes one pedestrian, then two, then ten. By the time he makes it into the tourist district proper, even the chilly morning air has given way to the familiar lukewarm, reeking smog-stench of too many people in too small a place.

Hermann is almost relieved. His certainty that Newt would’ve come this way only grows; he would certainly have followed the signs of life.

The Taiheiyō no Kioku Aquarium is a tall complex of metal and glass, taking up the whole northern side of a wide plaza. Kanji have been graffitied on the ground in chalk, and a number of tawdry, garishly lit tourist shops are beginning to roll up their gates. Costumed girls appear here and there, handing out leaflets and advertisements. The multilingual chatter of tours and school groups is almost dizzying after the quiet of the dead district.

Hermann looks up at the aquarium as he makes his slow and painful way across the plaza. It’s an example of engineering excellence, he’ll give it that. One of the tanks- a bright green one, seeming to shine with phosphorous and flourishing seaweed- has been built up into the exterior wall itself, allowing curious passers-by a glimpse of what lies inside. Hermann can see a number of children clustered around the tank, tapping on the glass. He can’t understand a word they’re saying, but from the sound of their voices, they’re impressed.

Hermann spots a familiar figure sitting on a bench out front, silhouetted against the green water. He lets out a sigh of relief and goes to sit next to him.

Newt is sitting with his elbows on his knees, his head bowed, not talking. His head moves a little when Hermann sits; he knows he’s there, but says nothing. Hermann doesn’t try to talk to him, instead turning his attention to the aquarium, and the slow, rhythmic waving of the seaweed. The silence is concerning. The only thing more intolerable than being berated by Newton Geiszler is being ignored by him.

Hermann looks around at their surroundings, taking in the sound of laughing children, and the sight of backpacking tourists clustered in the bright, cramped spaces of a newly-opened gacha shop. They’re out in the open here, in full view of anyone who might care to look at them. Cautiously, he reaches out to touch Newt’s knee.

Newt twitches again, an almost unconscious response. Hermann watches the gears turn in Newt’s head. The realization, then the sharp glance over his shoulder to see if anyone can see them. They can- Hermann knows they can- and Newt smiles sadly, giving Hermann a very soft look as he nudges Hermann’s hand off.

“You don’t have to do that,” he says gently.

Hermann puts his hand back on Newt’s leg, more insistently this time, and Newt lets out a surprised little huff of laughter. He covers Hermann’s hand with his, gently at first, then clinging hard like he’s going to fall.

“Sorry about that,” Newt says, finally. “I, uh . . . I shouldn’t have took off like that. That was a real dick move on my part.”

“I knew where you’d go,” Hermann says mildly. “I know you.”

“You knew where I’d go, you knew where I’d go,” Newt mutters. His glasses have slid halfway down his nose. “You didn’t know where I’d go, man. I didn’t know where I’d go. I picked a direction and went.”

“I know,” says Hermann, “because I remember fishing with my uncle on a number of particularly dismal afternoons. I used to think he knew everything there was to know about fish, but I found out later that he just studied up on them to impress me.”

“You remember fishing with my uncle when you were a kid,” Newt says slowly. He laughs, a nervous thing. “The same way I remember being like, six, and sitting on the bathroom sink while my sister tried to put mascara on me?”

Hermann smiles. “You don’t have a sister.”

“You don’t have an uncle.”

The urge to embrace him is almost overwhelming, and Hermann has to look away to swallow the impulse down. He watches a pair of clownfish chase each other in circles among the pebbles. “There’s two of them,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Newt. “Yeah. There’s two of them.”

“They’re endangered, now. Ever since we closed the Breach.”

“A dying breed, huh.”

Hermann turns his hand in Newt’s, to lace their fingers together. “What are we going to do, Newton?” he says wearily.

“I don’t . . . I don’t know.”

“You have to know,” Hermann says, and perhaps it comes out a little more sharply than he meant it because Newt is looking up at him in irritation and _there,_ there’s that frustrated narrowing of the eyes he likes to see. Anything but the dead-eyed, dismal staring into the water.

“You have to know,” Hermann says again, this time more gently. “I never know what to do, Newton. I can tell you precisely what’s happening, and the nature of the threat. I can tell you how it will all play out. But I cannot _do_ anything about it, Newton. Only you are capable of such action.”

Newt’s brow is furrowed, but he makes a game effort at smiling. “Yeah, well. Lucky for me I’ve got some asshole nagging me every hour of the day. Otherwise I’d never get anything done,” His smile falters. “Too busy picking directions and going.”

“You sell yourself short,” says Hermann. He shifts a little in his seat, taking some of the weight off his bad leg. “You would have done well in the Shatterdome without me there. I, on the other hand . . .”

He makes a so-so gesture with his hand. Newt laughs. “Nah, man. People didn’t hate you that bad.”

“You were the only one who talked to me,” Hermann says. It slips out before he can stop it.

Newt glances around to make sure they’re unobserved- for Hermann’s sake, more than his own- and moves his hand a little higher to squeeze Hermann’s wrist. “You were the only one who listened,” he confides, in a low whisper.

They look into the cold, greenish depths of the aquarium wall. The smaller fish skim lightly through the water near the surface, while down, down, down near the rocks, the big fish swim slow.

“Hey, Herm . . .” Newt says slowly, still watching the fish play two-by-two. “How’re you doing with that PONS unit?”

There’s no point in lying about it. Not with Newt, who always knows. “Poorly,” Hermann admits. “But, as I said, it will take time. I haven’t had much chance to devote myself to the task.”

Newt nods thoughtfully. Then he bends his arms up and over his head, stretching himself out with a strained grunt before slumping, satisfied, back into his seat. Hermann feels a similar satisfaction come over him, another quiet reminder that their bodies are as linked as their minds.

“Did you see that gacha shop?” he asks. “It opened like, right when you arrived.”

Hermann frowns, glances up at the candy-colored shopfront. “Yes, of course.”

“I want . . . I’m gonna buy one. You’ll come with me?”

Hermann opens his mouth to reply but Newt stands up first, a sudden burst of movement that makes Hermann hasten to stand up too.

“You gotta come with me,” Newt says. He gives his head a little shake. “You and me. We’ll do this together, right?”

Hermann has a feeling he’s not talking about the gacha.

“Of course we will,” Hermann assures him. His hand ghosts over Newt’s shoulder. “Have you forgotten? We’re rockstars.”

Newt looks at him, starry-eyed and smiling. “C’mon,” he says. Then louder, “C’mon, dude, I’m gonna buy one and you’re gonna pay for it.”

“Of course I am,” Hermann huffs, cheerfully indignant as he follows Newt across the plaza. “I’m not _made_ of yen, you know, and I am most certainly not about to pay your way through Japan.”

Newt makes a derisive hissing sound through his teeth, and waits on the threshold of the door while Hermann digs in his pockets for yet another 100 yen coin. “That one,” he says, pointing to one of the machines near the front. There’s something in his voice that Hermann can’t quite place. An anxiety, almost, though that’s not what Newt sounds like when he’s anxious.

The machine in question is adorned with glossy pictures of the collectables inside, lined up in a row against a hideous blue-and-red backdrop. Hermann sees them and feels a curious clenching sensation in his stomach, like something inside him is shrinking. Then he laughs, to take the edge off. It’s a short, nasty thing.

Newt gives him a sidelong look, altogether too knowing. “Crazy, huh,” he says.

“Crazy is one word for it,” Hermann mutters. “Tasteless. Juvenile.”

“Marketable. It’s just like what our boy HC does. Used to be like dozens of these things in here,all with different models. But now it’s just the one.”

Hermann stands at Newt’s shoulder as he slots the coin in and turns the crank. The pictures on the front are conveniently named and numbered.

 _(1) Brawler Yukon_  
_(2) Horizon Brave_  
_(3) Cherno Alpha_  
_(4) Gipsy Danger_  
_(5) Matador Fury_  
_(6) Crimson Typhoon_

Newt catches the capsule as it rolls out, and hesitates for only a moment before cracking it open. There’s a tiny metal Jaeger inside, with hinged legs that collapse in on themselves and two wide, flat metal plates on its shoulders. It looks almost beetle-like, lying in Newt’s palm. The edges of its plates look surprisingly sharp.

“Look at this,” Newt whispers, as though showing a Hermann a butterfly landing in his palm. He stands the Jaeger up. It falls over again. “I got Brawler Yukon.”

Hermann holds out his hand and Newt tips the toy into it, as though trying not to shock Yukon’s system. Hermann pokes at its legs with one long, pale finger. The legs scrunch up, then extend again.

Newt is looking at him with an expression that Hermann is afraid to analyze. “You wrote the code for this little guy, huh,” he murmurs. “Well. This big guy.”

Hermann nods, still examining the gachapon. It’s a good likeness, truth be told. He can almost imagine Lightcap and D’Onofrio, immortalized in miniature, looking out at him from the cockpit.

“You coded all the Mark Ones, but he was the first. You _built_ him.”

Newt shifts his weight from foot to foot, his eyes downcast. He looks very, very small.

“You’re kind of a hero,” he says finally, and those words slip into Hermann’s heart and unbolt it, flooding him with a sudden rush of warmth and embarrassment. He is acutely aware of how close Newt is. Close enough to hold, if they were somewhere private, somewhere no one could see.

“Don’t say things like that to me,” he says finally, pitching his voice down. “You- you-”

“It’s true though,” Newt whispers back, just as fervently. “If there are two new kaiju in the world, we’re gonna have to be heroes. And you’re mine, you awkward fuck.”

He holds out his hand for the Jaeger. Hermann presses it into his hand.

Newt narrows his eyes, holds up the toy between two fingers. “You know why I got this, right? You know what I’m thinking?”

“Unfortunately, I do,” says Hermann. He feels hot and excited and _eager,_ God, he can see the way Newt’s eyes are gleaming. Like he’s thinking about something stupid. Like he’s going to push Hermann into something he’ll definitely, maybe, probably regret.

“We’re gonna need to build a Jaeger, dude. And we have to be like, completely covert. Nobody can know about this or the whole planet’s gonna freak.”

“And how do you propose we do that, exactly?”

“Hannibal Chau,” says Newt, not even bothering to keep his voice down anymore. He starts rocking back and forth restlessly. “Hannibal, _Hannibal_ has money, he has people. We have people. Didn’t you say he was expanding into J-tech? And he’s got that lair, dude,” and his eyes seem distant, now, as he shoves the gachapon into his pocket and begins to talk with his hands, “you know, that huge fucking hideout where he snorts coke off turtles or whatever the fuck he does?”

Hermann runs a hand through his hair, his mouth gone dry as he starts thinking through the implications. “We can’t . . . we can’t _build a Jaeger,_ Newton.”

“Why not! _Ki wo tsukete,_ ” Newt exclaims, bowing hastily to the shopkeeper and hurrying outside. “We could _do_ it, Hermann. You saw those kaiju, they were _tiny_ by comparison, they weren’t even Category I! What if we made a Jaeger, but on a smaller scale, something we could- oh baby we gotta-”

“Stop walking away from me!” Hermann snarls, grabbing Newt’s arm and tugging him back. “We would need engineers.”

“Hannibal has engineers.”

“We would need _resources._ ”

“We _have_ resources, dude, throw a, a, a rock in any direction and you hit Jaeger scrap!” Newt stammers. “The only thing we can’t replicate is a PONS unit and an operating system, and you _wrote_ the operating system, Herm.”

Hermann gestures furiously in Newt’s face to shut him up. “Newton! Even if we could pull off such a ludicrous scheme, merely in an attempt, a _ploy,_ to kill two hitherto unsuspected kaijus, you are forgetting the one thing on which such an endeavor depends.”

 _“We need pilots,”_ they say in unison, and Hermann swears viciously at the ground. Newt grins, grips Hermann’s shoulders tightly. “We’re rockstars, Hermann. You just said it. We’re rockstars, right?”

“Rockstars are not comparable to _pilots,_ ” Hermann insists, giving Newt a firm thump in the chest with the head of his cane. “We cannot pilot a Jaeger together, Newton. Have you forgotten my disability? Your neurology? Even something so pedestrian as near-sightedness-”

“Then it doesn’t have to be us,” Newt says breathlessly. “So we need pilots, right? We know pilots.”

Hermann hesitates, briefly at a loss for words. “Are you suggesting-”

“Oh yeah, dude,” says Newt, smiling wide, breathing heavily. “We gotta get the band back together.”


	6. Getting the Band Back Together

_Honestly? For such a domineering asshole you’re kind of a daddy’s boy_.

It had taken all of three days in their Shatterdome lab space for Newt to share that little nugget of psychological insight. Hermann had thrown a blackboard eraser at his head, which Newt hadn’t bothered to duck, and the conversation had turned to Newt’s lab hygiene and whether the apocalypse was still covered by OSHA.

Unfortunately it was a sound hypothesis, and Hermann, reflecting on it as he sits opposite Hannibal Chau, realizes it to be true.

It had been true since university, when he would have bent over backwards to please his teachers. No, ever since grade school. When he would sit up late with a textbook under the covers, and listen to his father’s footsteps down some distant hall.

Not that Newt would understand such a thing. Newt thrived on attention, swilled it like beer, and it didn’t matter to him what kind. A punch in the belly was as good as a kiss on the cheek. Hermann knew- not from any conscious thought, but from a gut certainty- that Newt had never yearned to make anyone _proud_ of him. There was no need. His father loved him, his uncle doted on him. His mother, when she called, always admired his grades.

But that yearning- for someone to be _proud_ \- had dogged Hermann’s lurching footsteps all his life. From Garmisch-Partenkirchen (where he was, depending on his father’s whims, a show pony or a pariah) to the Shatterdome (where Stacker Pentecost wanted _his_ research on his desk, _his,_ and oh, doesn’t that twist your stomach, Newton) to Hannibal Chau’s dark, faintly sweet-smelling study in Hong Kong (where he’s shackled himself to a criminal for reasons he doesn’t dare share with Newt.)

He can tell by Hannibal’s face that he’s hanging in the balance between incredulity and outright hostility. Hermann, ever-lopsided, makes an effort to sit up a little straighter in his chair. He feels his lack of height acutely whenever he approaches Hannibal Chau. Even sitting, the man dwarfs him.

He hopes, desperately, that Hannibal thinks well of him.

“You’re serious,” Hannibal says, after he’s kept Hermann hanging for what seems like eons. “You’re serious with this shit? Gottlieb, tell me he’s not serious.”

Newt is in the chair beside him, sitting like a human being for once. He’s perched on the edge of his seat with a kind of poised stillness. Hermann likens him in his mind to a mongoose, poised and trembling, waiting for the cobra’s hood. Hermann clears his throat, nods pointedly at Newt. “I’m afraid he is, Mr. Chau. And so am I.”

“You’re supposed to be the fuckin’ sane one.”

“Ah, yes, sir, I am aware.”

Hannibal pokes a huge finger at Newt’s chest, but his eyes are fixed on Hermann. “You’re supposed to keep his crazy in check. Man’s got a brain like a bag full of cats, and you told me you’d keep them from runnin’ wild.”

“Sir,” Hermann says coldly, as Newt lets out a sharp huff of laughter. “I would ask that you refrain from speaking about him as though he’s not in the room.”

“I won’t refrain from shit,” Hannibal says sharply. Then he smiles, cat-like, as he relaxes back in his chair.

Hannibal’s study suits him perfectly; half gaudily opulent, and half in shadow. The warm, enclosed space would almost be comforting if it weren’t for Hannibal himself, studying Hermann from behind his tinted lenses. Looking for “the crazy,” as he calls it. Looking for a soft place to bite down.

“I like you, Gottlieb,” he says, finally. “I like you a lot. But you’re a fuckin’ head case if you think I’m about to divert half my fortune and my whole damn labor force into a building some big-ass robot to kill two kaiju that aren’t even a threat.”

“They are a very real threat, sir,” says Newt, just as Hermann is opening his mouth. He opens the J-tech laptop in his lap and turns it so Hannibal can see, tapping one fingernail against the screen. “You can see, right here, one of them has been shedding biomatter very rapidly; scales, velvet, kaiju blue . . .”

“The toxicity of that region of the Pacific has been heretofore attributed to backwash from the collapse of the Breach,” Hermann cuts in, “which, in its own way, quite correct. We can’t be certain at this stage, but we believe that these kaijus were _in production,_ shall we say, during the triple event-”

“-and Operation Pitfall resulted in a significant backwash of detritus and foreign material,” Newt continues, snapping the laptop shut. “In other words, a whole lot of alien crap and shrapnel from Gipsy Danger. Given the confusion of the moment, the temporary damage to the sea beacons-”

“-and the size of the kaijus in question, I’m afraid it’s likely that they were missed during the event,” Hermann concludes. Only then does he realize he’s been leaning forward in his chair. Newt’s hands are still raised in mid-illustration.

Hermann can see the gleam of Hannibal’s gold teeth as he bares them. He watches as Hannibal reaches slowly across the desk and takes a Montblanc pen from its holder, rolling it thoughtfully between his fingers as he leans back into his seat. Every movement Hannibal makes gives the impression of some vast, powerful thing, moving slowly. He reminds Hermann of a Jaeger, right down to the metal on his shoes. A construct, carefully presented.

“And we’re the only people in the whole goddamn world who know about it?” he asks, finally.

“As far as we know, yes.”

“And these kaiju, they’re what . . . babies?”

“They’re small, yes,” says Newt, his fingers tapping an irregular beat against the laptop, “but they’re not infantile. They’re not even Category I, but they’re, uh, they’re nothing like Otachi’s Baby.”

He looks almost apologetic as he says it, and Hermann knows why. He can see the gleam of Hannibal’s golden balisong knife in his pocket. When Newt had peeled the final bandages off his neck and bared his Otachi tattoo to the open air, Hannibal had grinned and said _It’s like you’re lookin’ for a cut throat, kid_. He hadn’t meant it. Probably.

Hannibal, for his part, doesn’t seem bothered. He keeps spinning the Montblanc between his fingers, and directs his next question to the space between the two of them. “Why do I get the feeling there’s shit you don’t know yet.”

Hermann swallows roughly. “Well, yes. There’s only so much information we can clean from this computer without, er, the original user.”

“And that would be?”

Newt and Hermann exchange looks.

 

_Tendo Choi gets the notification at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning in Oakland, when he’s just starting his second cigarette of the day and trying to pick which jacket to wear to church. He almost hates himself for how quickly he jumps for his phone._

foxgeiszler: hey dudes!!! no new eyeballs but I’m back in #oakland for a monster movie weekend. hoping to see some of my old faves again ;) #oblivionbay #hitmeup #youknowwhoyouare

_It’s a good picture, but Newt’s always are. A selfie taken from a high angle- he’s perched precariously on a wide, twisted piece of sheet metal, his sunglasses white with California sun._

_Monster Movie Weekend. That means- come quick. It’s going to be good._

_Tendo grins hopefully and takes a quick shot of his jackets, which are currently scattered haphazardly across his bed._

legalizer695: Another #lazysunday in #oakland. Could really use a monster movie weekend. Haven’t had one in years. #youknowwhoyouare #rockabillyfashion

_So Newt’s back in America. More importantly, he’s at Oblivion Bay. Tendo shoves his phone into his back pocket and grabs his keys, church all but forgotten. It ought to worry him, how pleased he is that Newt’s back online._

_It doesn’t worry him much, not until he gets behind the wheel and starts driving. Then it worries him almost to the exclusion of all else, and he almost runs a red light without thinking about it._

_It almost hurts, how the pace of Tendo’s life has slowed to a crawl. “J-Tech” is words on a resumé and LOCCENT is a patch on a jacket. Every time Tendo turns on the news he’s reminded of all the hasty tourniquets tightened around the local economy, all the dried blood where the ordeal of international travel has scabbed over. Lazy Sunday mornings feel like a time capsule of the past. Like the world hadn’t been ending for twelve years, and the whole savage ordeal had been little more than a withdrawal hallucination._

_But now and then, he’ll glimpse Newt on Instagram. Herc Hansen on Facebook. Mako Mori on Twitter. And all at once it comes back to him like a shot of caffeine, and he remembers what it was to be scared, and loved, and exhausted at the end of the world._

_He misses it._

_He misses it so much._

_So it’s nothing, really, to drive an hour and a half to Oblivion Bay._

_It’s nothing, really, to find Newt leaning against the wall outside the security office, cast in the shadow of Tacit Ronin’s discarded shell as it looms above them from the other side of the perimeter. He laughs like it’s Christmas morning when he sees Tendo waving at him from the other end of the parking lot._

_Newt looks different in person than he does on Insta. His hands are tanned dark, and though he’s hiding it well, Tendo can see the tension knotting his limbs, and the red that rims his eyes, like he’s been crying. For all that, he still looks healthy enough to leap at Tendo when he gets close enough, wrapping his arms and legs around him in an octopus hug tight enough to choke the breath out of a kaiju._

_“Hey, buddy!” Newt grins into Tendo’s shoulder. “Dude you look weird as hell, I’m so happy to see you!”_

_“Same, my man,” Tendo laughs. “Same.”_

_He awkwardly lowers Newt to the ground and endures the inevitable once-over, Newt looking him up and down and nodding, occasionally muttering, “Sure, sure.” Then he pulls a squashed box of strawberry Pocky out of his back pocket and, with great solemnity, draws one out with his teeth like a cigarette. He offers one to Tendo- who shakes his head sternly like he’s trying to quit- and Newt breaks into another delighted grin._

_“Dude,” he says, “how would you like to hang out with me and Herm on a tropical island off the coast of China for like the next half a year?”_

_“Um,” says Tendo._

_“But wait,” says Newt, “it gets worse. There’s like a whole good news bad news scenario here.”_

_“Alrighty then.”_

_“The island’s owned by a criminal.”_

_“Oh, shit.”_

_“The bad news,” Newt continues, wincing, “well . . . you might wanna sit down for the bad news.”_

_“I’m in,” says Tendo. “You called Monster Movie Weekend, that’s it. That’s all I gotta hear, brother.”_

_“But the bad news . . . it’s like some serious shit, dude.”_

_“Tell you what,” says Tendo, taking the box of Pocky out of Newt’s hand and reopening it. “Does the bad news have anything to do with why you’re hanging out in Oblivion Bay with, uh,” he does a quick count of the cars in the parking lot, “eight unmarked black vehicles?”_

_“Yeah,” says Newt, after a moment’s silence. “Something like that.”_

_“Alright,” Tendo bobs his head thoughtfully. “Cool, cool, cool. Tell me everything. From the beginning, I mean. And don’t leave anything out.”_

 

Hannibal’s expertise lies in kaiju biology, business sense, and getting information out of unwilling subjects. Fortunately J-tech is so much technobabble to him, so when Hermann spreads his mock-up blueprints across the desk for him, Hannibal doesn’t inspect them too closely. As far as he’s concerned, they’re neat and appropriately theoretical.

“Even if we did pull a stunt like this,” he says, leaning forward to put his elbows on the desk, “we don’t have the fuckin’ manpower. Money ain’t shit but the labor, that’s gonna be harder to pull together. Especially if it’s top fuckin’ secret.”

Newt adjusts his glasses a little where they keep slipping down. “We’re fucked if word gets out about this.”

“That’s why we need your island,” Hermann nods. “Complete isolation, complete privacy. Nobody involved with the project- with the exception of our makeshift LOCCENT- will have complete information on the project.”

“And you’ll be able to pull together the labor,” Newt agrees eagerly. “You’ve got, what, two thousand scalpers and engineers plugged into your organization? And that’s just in Hong Kong? Mr. Chau, a Jaeger that’s half the size- not _even_ \- of a Mark I. A skeleton Jaeger, all bits and pieces scavenged from Oblivion Bay, we could _do_ that.”

Hermann stands, and wobbles for a moment, but he rests himself heavily on his cane and waves off Newt’s hand. “None of your men have worked with J-tech before,” he says magnanimously. “Only I have.”

“And me,” says Newt.

“You,” Hannibal turns his face to Newt. “Shut up.”

“Fortunately,” Hermann continues, narrowing his eyes, “we’re in contact with one of the finest engineers the PPDC ever had.”

 

_Hermann knocks on her door very, very gently. From behind it, he hears a muffled, “Who is it?”_

_“I know it’s not office hours just yet,” he says, raising his voice a little to be heard through the door, “but I have a number of questions regarding the curriculum.”_

_The sound of tools being shoved into their boxes. Rapid footsteps across a polished floor. Then the door swinging wide, and-_

_“Dr. Gottlieb,” Mako Mori says warmly, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him close. He’d never used to hug her, and she’d never once made him, but after the drift with Newt such things came to him much more easily, and he hugs her back as tight as he can before pulling away._

_“You look in excellent health, Mako,” Hermann says, smiling in spite of himself. She’s hardly seemed to age in the years since Operation Pitfall. If anything Mako looks younger, happier, though her smiles still peek out like slivers of moonlight at the end of an eclipse. Her face is framed by two shocks of wine-red hair. It hasn’t been blue in a while._

_“I wasn’t expecting you to come by today,” says Mako. She steps back to allow Hermann to enter her workshop, which, despite the lack of chemical biohazards, reminds Hermann of Newt’s in its level of organized chaos. “Would you like a cup of tea?”_

_“Yes, please,” Hermann says gratefully. “It’s been a long flight and, ah, I’ve had a bit of a difficult week.”_

_They sit and chat amicably as they wait for the kettle to boil. Their conversations are peaceful back-and-forths, of the kind which Newt has never been capable of. Mako speaks freely about her work with Hermann, in a way he knew she’d never quite been able to talk to anyone else. Until Raleigh, and the drift._

_He's glad to know that she's happy here. Having been her tutor for much of her young life, Hermann often feels the need to check up on her. Perhaps more than is welcome, truth be told, but she indulges him and he is privately thankful to her for it._

_“I’m glad to hear you’ve completed most of your robots workshops,” Hermann says, nodding in gratitude when Mako pours him a cup of chai tea. “I imagine your students must be an eclectic set.”_

_“Eclectic, yes, that is a word for them,” Mako laughs. “But they are enthusiastic. They have their work, and they are inspired, I think, by Raleigh and me. You as well.”_

_“Now then, no need for all that.”_

_“It’s true. They talk about you all the time. They complain that there is no longer a Jaeger Academy, and no more Jaegers to program.”_

_Hermann, blowing on his tea to cool it, stills. “Ah.”_

_Mako sips her tea hot, and doesn’t bother to cool it. “You’ve gone all quiet. As though you are about to be caught.”_

_“Caught?” Hermann scoffs. “Nonsense, no. Not at all . . . I’m afraid I’ve only just remembered why I came all the way back to London to speak to you.”_

_He sets his tea down on its saucer._

_“Tell me, what do you know of Hannibal Chau?”_

 

“Between her knowledge of large-scale J-tech engineering and the parts we’re able to scavenge out of Oblivion Bay, we could set up a skeleton walker in as little as half a year,” says Hermann, more than a little proudly. “It would be a simple matter for your scalpers, even working free of government supervision. Harvesting a dead Jaeger is no more significant a task than harvesting a dead kaiju.”

“The only gear we won’t be able to salvage is a PONS unit,” Newt says eagerly. “And we won’t _have_ to, because we’ve already _got_ one. That’ll allow us to engage the two-pilot system. Left hemisphere, right hemisphere.”

“And who the fuck’s gonna pilot this thing,” Hannibal says quietly.

Hermann’s heart sinks a little in his chest. “Well, you see . . .”

“Mako,” Newt says firmly. “And Raleigh. If Mako’s in, Raleigh’s in too. It won’t even be a question.”

His voice stumbles into silence, and he finally sinks back into his chair, sliding down a few inches. His knees are hopping up and down from where he’s bouncing his heels against the floor. Hermann wants very badly to reach over and touch him; or rather, for Newt to be the first to reach out.

He doesn’t, though. Hermann keeps his eyes resolutely on Hannibal, who, at this point in the proceedings, has drawn his balisong, and is flipping it open and closed again in a way that makes Hermann very uncomfortable.

“You know what this sounds like to me?” Hannibal says slowly. “It sounds like a couple of boys asking their daddy for money to play with robots.”

“. . . We’re sorry, sir.”

“Cut the subservient bullcrap, Gottlieb,” Hannibal snorts. “I know you only do that shit when you’re trying to get me to fold. This guy,” he adds, and he’s pointing at Hermann but looking at Newt. “Never play poker with this guy. Sonuvabitch counts cards.”

“I didn’t know you guys played cards,” Newt says awkwardly, glancing at Hermann before hastily turning his attention back to Hannibal.

“Once,” Hannibal says. “Just the once.” He gives Newt a long, hard look. Then he waves a dismissive hand. “I need a moment to talk to Gottlieb. In private. No fuckin’ eavesdropping.”

Hermann feels, rather than sees, Newt go still next to him. His knees stop bouncing. “Um,” Newt says tightly.

 _“Now,_ Geiszler.”

Newt gives Hermann a pleading look. Hermann looks back at him steadily, and Newt slowly gets up, pulling Tendo’s laptop out from under his seat and tucking it under his arm.

“I’ll,” he says. “I’ll, uh. Yeah. I’ll leave you to it.”

Hermann almost says something- don’t worry, we’ll get the money, I’ll convince him- but Newt ducks his head to avoid meeting Hermann’s eye. He scurries out of the room as though herded out, and the action reminds Hermann sharply of their first few weeks under the command of Stacker Pentecost. How Newt, clipboard in hand, had nodded and scurried and tried to look unimportant in the face of such compelling authority.

“Gottlieb,” Hannibal says, after the door closes on Newt’s embarrassment, “I really don’t know what to think. Whiskey?”

“Please,” says Hermann, although he drinks only rarely. He starts getting up to pour it, but Hannibal firmly puts up his hand, and Hermann sinks back down into his chair. He sets awkwardly with his cane across his lap, watching Hannibal pour.

“Geiszler’s been working for me for . . . what, four years now?” Hannibal says, offering Hermann a whiskey. Hermann takes his glass with a murmur of thanks, and sips it cautiously as Hannibal sits down across from him. It burns his throat, but he swallows. “He’s more or less as good as you said he’d be.”

“With all due respect, Hannibal, he’s the best in his field.”

“I don’t need the best in the field,” Hannibal says shortly. “He can’t tell me anything that I don’t already know.”

Hermann says nothing.

“You’re the best fuckin’ numbers guy the PPDC ever had. I wanted you doing my books, that’s no secret. You know I only hired him because you said you were a package deal?”

“I am aware.”

“You wanna elaborate on that?”

“No,” says Hermann sharply, setting his glass down on the desk. “I do not. Suffice it to say that my involvement with you continues only insofar as his does. I am here for him, not for you.”

He’s starting to really hate those damn sunglasses. He knows what’s behind them. A split pupil, watery and scarred, from a public anti-kaiju shelter in Hong Kong. Hermann is not one to be squeamish about scars, but the split pupil reminds him of the eye of a kaiju. Even more than the blood in his own drift scar; the one that he saw looking back at him whenever he met Newt's eyes.

“Gottlieb,” Hannibal says gently, like he’s trying to be understanding. “The man’s a nutcase. He’s holding you back.”

“He’s the most brilliant man I’ve ever met,” Hermann snarls back. He wouldn’t dare speak to Hannibal like this in front of Newt. Hannibal would never let him.

“And you think this crackpot scheme of his actually has a chance of working?”

“Have my predictions been wrong yet?”

Hannibal sighs. Runs a hand through his short, bristly hair, and stands up again. “This could cost me my business, Gottlieb.”

“You get two new kaijus out of it,” says Hermann, standing up as well. Hannibal gestures for him to sit, but he doesn’t. “Furthermore, should these creatures continue to live unchecked, the environmental damage alone could ruin the planet you sell your fucking kaiju parts on.”

 _Listen to me,_ he thinks, incredulous. _I’m beginning to sound like Newt_.

Hannibal studies him for a long moment. Then he offers his hand. “You better not fuck up.”

Hermann shakes it. “We won’t.”

 

It’s almost midnight, the earliest flight out of Hong Kong leaves at six, and they’re so high on _we’re doing this we’re actually fucking doing this_ that within five minutes of Hermann hobbling back over the thresh hold of their room Newt is already out of the shower and kissing him breathless.

It had been almost an ambush. Newt’s body is as tense as a wire, every knot in his back screaming to be massaged out. Hermann can feel it in the way Newt speaks, and in the way his hands falter when he slides them into Hermann’s trousers. He had stepped out of the bathroom with his hair still wet from the shower, just as Hermann had shed his coat, and the look on his face was one of such utter confusion and helplessness that Hermann had ached to hold him. Just to touch his hair for a moment and try, futility, to puzzle out his problems like equations.

But that’s not what Newt needs when he’s tense. Newt, who always knows what to do, always has his head in the sky and nothing to ground him. Hermann knows what it must be like for him, to have stumbled so rapidly into a scheme of this magnitude. Their meeting with Hannibal must have made it feel real to him, somehow. There’s no other reason for the way Newt’s grip is so tight on the front of Hermann’s sweater.

And there’s nothing whatsoever that Hermann can do about it. Except, perhaps, shoulder some of the burden.

He guides Newt into the bedroom and back towards the bed, careful on his unsteady legs. His hands are still buried in Newt’s shower-wet hair as he kisses him deeper. “Detestable boy,” he says gently, meaning, _you are my best friend,_ and Newt whines long and low before dropping to his knees beside the bed.

Hermann runs his hands through Newt’s hair, down to his neck, his shoulders, and up again. Newt doesn’t try to hide that he’s leaning into it. His eyes are closed, his breath coming in short and shallow huffs. _That’s it,_ Hermann finds himself thinking, hoping that somehow, through the fraying wires of their drift connection, Newt will be able to hear his words. _Sprawl into my hands, there’s a good lad. Let the vibrations slip from you until you are still. I will take it all. I will take it all_.

Newt nuzzles closer to him, his hands on Hermann’s thighs as he mouths up the length of his cock, tonguing at his zipper. When he finally takes him into his mouth it’s almost too much too fast, hot and wet and _unbearably_ pleasant after the tension of their meeting. Hermann groans and strokes Newt’s scalp, hopes he knows how appreciative he is. He’s dripping already, making a mess of Newt’s mouth, but for once Newt isn’t complaining. His eyes are half-closed, as though in a trance, and he groans around Hermann’s cock like he wants to be choked with it.

Hermann lets his hand slip lower, rubbing Newt’s shoulders under the too-thin cotton of his old MIT shirt. He imagines, but can’t see, the colors beneath his fingers. “These are extraordinary,” Hermann murmurs, struggling to keep his voice steady as Newt swallows around the head of his cock. “Some- ah- sometimes when I touch you, I fancy the monsters are licking my skin.”

“Oh God,” Newt croaks, drawing back for air. His face his flushed and sticky, his eyes red-rimmed. “Oh God, fuck.”

Hermann runs his knuckles lightly along the crested nose of Spinejackal, where he knows it rears rampant across Newt’s left shoulder blade. Then he twines his hand into Newt’s hair again and pulls his head back, kissing him hard enough, he hopes, to calm the chemical riot in his brain.

 _"Ich kann fühlen, dass du dich entwirrst wie die Spiralarme der Galaxis.”_ he whispers. _"Du machst mir Sorgen."_

 _“Ich liebe dich,”_ Newt whimpers. _“Hör auf zu reden.”_

Hermann begins to stroke himself, leaning down to kiss along Newt’s jaw as he does it. He can feel Newt pressing his hardness up against his leg, desperately seeking friction, as if he thinks Hermann won’t notice. Carefully, slowly, he presses the sole of one polished black shoe lightly against the front of Newt’s boxers.

Newt gasps into Hermann’s mouth and begins to grind in earnest, closing his eyes and groaning when he sees Hermann’s knowing smile. He gives Newt a little more pressure, just enough to make him shudder, and he knows Newt is getting close.

 _Because I’m getting close,_ he thinks deliriously, stroking himself faster, and God, he can already feel it. The ghost of a drift, echoing back and forth between them as their heart rates rise. He can feel Newt’s desperation- something almost like hope, flickering in the circuits of Newt’s mind and gone again- and knows that Newt is feeling Hermann’s own desperate desire to please.

Hermann licks his lips, and his eyes fall half closed as he realizes he can taste it again. His own taste, bitter and warm in the back of Newt’s throat. Then the overwhelming, panicky desire to say it, just say it, just blurt it out before he loses him-

“Only, only you,” Newt stammers. It sounds painful, like the words have been torn from him by force. His eyes are shut tight, his face tilted up. “Only you, ever, okay, _schatzi?”_

The thought lances through Hermann’s skull- _mark me-_ clear as a lightning strike, and Hermann spends himself with a groan that he chokes into silence. Three thick, warm spurts that make a mess across Newt's face and in his hair, and Hermann can hear Newt’s long, low groan of relief as he comes in his boxers. _A waste,_ Hermann thinks dimly, his mind swimming with vague images and discordant thoughts. He finds he’s beginning to care less and less about whose thoughts are whose, and which memories belong in which mind. _We belong in each other’s minds, I think. God, I love him._

He runs his thumb along the curve of Newt’s cheek. “I’ve made a bit of a mess of you, I’m afraid,” he murmurs.

Newt’s eyes are fully open now, watching him with something almost like worship. With anyone else it might make Hermann balk- he is not accustomed to such looks, not from Newt or anyone else- but for now he leans down, brushes his lips against Newt’s sticky forehead.

Newt grins at him weakly, but happily. Hermann can feel the lack of tension in his limbs, the post-coital languor that’s still warm in Newt’s blood. He watches as Newt takes off his still-dripping glasses and holds them up to the light.

“Can’t see a thing,” he says quietly, as though commenting on poor lab results. His eyes meet Hermann’s as he slowly licks one thick, white rope off one of the lenses, smudging the glass.

 _“Gott,”_ breathes Hermann in a choked whisper.

Newt licks them clean meticulously, one after the other. Hermann watches the movement of his throat as he swallows. Then he puts his glasses back on, and in a shaky voice says, “Will you fuck me?”

Hermann, still dreamy and euphoric from his climax, lazily pulls Newt closer and rubs his shoulders. He feels Newt tuck his face against his side, and rubs Newt’s hair. “I was under the impression that that was what we were doing,” he says, smiling.

“I mean really, thoroughly fuck me. On my back and everything. We used to do that a lot,” Newt says, very quietly. His voice is muffled against Hermann’s side. “. . . It’s been a while.”

“Of course I will, darling. If that’s what you want,” says Hermann. He stands, stifling a groan as the feeling returns to his leg, and lowers himself to the floor next to Newt. “You’ll have to give me a moment. I’m afraid I’m not as young as I once was.”

“You’re the same age as me.”

“I am older,” Hermann says curtly. “By one year.”

Newt gives him a pained smile, and Hermann begins to worry. He cups the back of Newt’s neck and kisses his cheek, his temple. Newt reaches out, seemingly without thinking about it, and picks a loose thread off the collar of Hermann’s shirt. “Do you miss me when I’m not here?” he asks.

“Do I _miss_ you?” Hermann responds, incredulous. He takes Newt’s face in both hands and kisses him hard, accepting the invitation to lick into his mouth when Newt parts his lips.

 _Of course I miss you,_ he thinks. _The chalk sounds like your footsteps when I write. I keep pausing, thinking I will hear you._

He hopes desperately that the ghost of the drift is still there between them, letting Newt _hear_ him, making stumbling, awkward words obsolete. _Please, no more words or foolish gestures between your thoughts and mine. Drink my mind from the source_.

But Newt is looking at Hermann with an almost child-like sadness, and Hermann feels terribly, thoroughly Other. When he says, haltingly, “Do you understand that I’m not going anywhere?” it draws a choked sob out of Newt, and he lays his head against Hermann’s shoulder and lets his eyes fall closed.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he hears Newt mutter. “Don’t go anywhere. The world can end again. That’s fine. Don’t go anywhere. Please.”

And Hermann promises, over and over, that he won't.


	7. Consequences of the Spiderweb Fracture

Hannibal stands in the center of a web of activity like a fat, red spider, and with every word or careless gesture, his web draws tighter. His pharmacy is a flurry of movement and activity. Favors are called in. Helicopters are booked. Boats are chartered. The more Hannibal complains, the more he smiles. Newt watches his broad-shouldered back from across the room and realizes that Hannibal’s enjoying this. Newt doesn’t care. Or rather, he cares so much that he’s plateaued.

Everyone wants to talk to Newt Geiszler and he barely notices. Tendo is behind the counter, typing furiously, filling Newt’s head with gossip about Alison and ducking out of the way as Hannibal’s men carry equipment over their shoulders and out the door. Mako and Raleigh are chatting with their arms around each other’s shoulders, rubbing against each other like cats, all innocence and quiet enthusiasm as they lift crates and pack suitcases and offer to get Newt takeout if he’s too busy to leave the Bone Slums.

When Hannibal’s not around, the workmen turn to him. He tells them where to go, what to do, and they nod and say _shì de xiānshēng_ and follow his instructions to the letter. Their attention should be intoxicating. Newt should be drunk on it, should be dancing around the lab and sitting backwards on chairs and making a general nuisance of himself.

But he isn’t. He fucking isn’t. Because Newt may be the center of gravity in every room he enters, but he turns his erratic orbit around Hermann and Hermann alone, and Hermann is sleeping with Hannibal Chau.

Newt’s known for a week now. Ever since that day in Hannibal’s office. He can feel the distance between him and Hermann growing wider, as though they’ve been cracked apart by a rib spreader.

Raleigh rubs Newt’s head and calls him a “crazy little guy” with such genuine affection that Newt has to excuse himself, practically fleeing through the lab to barricade himself in his quarters. That doesn’t feel barricaded enough so he hides in the bathroom, locking the door behind him and hurling himself into the chair in the shower. After a long moment of staring at the sink, his heels bouncing rhythmically against the floor, Newt says, “I’m losing my goddamn mind!” out loud and thumps his forehead into the shower wall.

It hurts, so he does it again. _Thump_.

“So what,” Newt declares. His voice sounds echoey and vague in the enclosed shower space. “So what if he’s banging Hannibal Chau. Who wouldn’t, right? Anyone would. Oh God.”

 _Thump_.

Fucking idiot for not seeing it before. The fancy new clothes, and the devotion to his work, and the yes sir no sir Hannibal Chau sir. Hannibal looks at Hermann like a lion watching a gazelle and Newt is an idiot, idiot, _idiot_ for not seeing it before. The thought had crept into his head when he first saw the jewelry, sure, but he had so longed to be wrong. He had given Hermann every opportunity to prove him wrong.

Hermann had been cheated on, once. A lifetime ago. Newt had tasted the pain of it, ever so briefly, in the drift.

 _I had never in my life felt more humiliated,_ said Hermann, who was no stranger to humiliation. He had whispered it as they lay together in the dark in Hermann’s bunk, the echo of the drift still running hot between them. Newt can remember the sound of the end-of-the-world party outside their door. Neither paid it any mind. _I had to break off the engagement. The things my father said to her when he found out . . . That is the only time I can recall him defending me._

God, he wishes he had never met Hannibal Chau. He wishes Hermann were here, now, instead of out there amid the bustle, griping good-naturedly about this or that while Mako purses her lips to keep from laughing and tries to look sympathetic. Hermann would be able to talk some sense into Newt, if he were here. Hermann would smack him lightly on the back of his head with his cane and tell him to _get up, Newton, I need the shower_. Newt would stutter something about Hannibal Chau, and Hermann would say _don’t be ridiculous, Newton_ in the gentlest voice in the world, and maybe they’d fuck like they used to fuck, when they didn’t leave their room for days and the world was reduced to the space between their breaths.

_I need a moment to talk to Gottlieb. In private. No fuckin’ eavesdropping._

Talk. Yeah, right. Talk, and then I’ll give you money to build your little Gundams. Talk, without that insignificant little joke of a man in the room. Talk, because Dr. Call-Me-Newt Geiszler is too stupid to realize when his partner is fucking someone else.

It doesn’t help that the dreams have been getting exponentially worse since they discovered the kaiju. For years Newt had assumed they were the product of trauma, of drifting with shitty equipment, of touching a hivemind. But the knowledge that there were still kaiju alive in the world today had thrown those dreams into a terrible new light.

_We are still connected to the hive. The dreams aren’t going to stop._

He dreams of pressing his bladed forehead to the Wall and knocking it down.

He dreams of chalk dust and bunsen burners and the old, crackling radio they’d kept in the K-Sci lab.

He dreams of Hermann murmuring loving abuse in his ear, calling him a monster fucker while he kisses his neck.

He wakes up every morning and if he’s lucky, Hermann’s there beside him. If he’s not, Hermann’s already up and halfway dressed. _I have to work on the PONS unit,_ he’ll say cheerily, as he pulls a sweater vest down over his head. _We’re moving to the island soon. You do want this Jaeger to walk, don’t you, Newton?_

 _I do,_ Newt wants to scream. _I do, I do, I do. But please, come back to bed_.

Newt’s forehead is stuck to the shower wall from how long he’s been leaning on it. He peels away and rubs his forehead before standing up and slowly exiting the bathroom. Their suitcases are already packed and standing by the door. Fake crocodile skin and tasteful black polycarbonate. It’ll be time to ship out soon. Out to Hannibal’s island, for who knows how long. No social media. No contact with the outside world.

Newt finds himself thinking miserably of how nice it would be to be alone on an island with Hermann. No Hannibal Chau, no Jaegers, no kaiju. Just the beach, and the stars, and maybe enough courage to say, _I love you. I’m sorry I’m not enough._

 

Newt closes his eyes and lets the smoggy, salty sea breeze play across his skin. The railing of the ship, rough with flaking paint, is bitterly cold against his skin. He tries not to think about how he hasn’t gotten a word in with Hermann all day. He thinks, instead, about the sounds of animated conversation coming from the cabin behind him. The lit windows, the music, the calm before the storm. He should go back there and join them. He knows he would be welcome.

Instead he leans against the railing, watching their boat cut through the water as it leaves the harbor. The Wei Tang memorial seems to wave at them with its three arms, still festooned with scaffolding. Newt wonders if it will be finished by the time they return, and he feels a sharp pang of loss for Cheung, Jin, and Hu.

A hand brushes lightly against the small of his back. Newt would know those fingertips anywhere.

“You’ve been quiet,” says Hermann stiffly, leaning next to him on the railing. He’s wearing his ridiculous oversized parka to combat the nighttime ocean breeze, and Newt almost laughs at how normal it all seems. “I find that disconcerting.”

“I’m fine, dude,” Newt says, shaking his head. “Been a bit low, I guess. You know me.”

Hermann’s brow is furrowed in concern. He looks worried. Or perhaps that’s just his face. “It’s just one apocalypse after another, with us,” he says. “I suppose it’s too much to ask that we live in peace.”

“Hey, peaceful is boring, right? We’ll get peaceful when we have tenure.”

“We could get tenure whenever we wanted, Newton. I believe it was you who told me that.”

“Yeah, well,” Newt says roughly, staring out over the water at Hong Kong. “Not today.”

Hermann is still frowning at him. “Come inside. Everyone likes you.”

“Yeah?”

“So do I.”

“Yeah,” Newt says weakly. “Yeah.”

Hermann tilts his head up, squinting as though he can see the stars through the light pollution. “Do you suppose the air will clear when we get farther out from Hong Kong?” he muses.

“I hope so,” Newt says quietly. “I’d like the air to clear.”

_Just tell him. Tell him you can’t imagine a future without him in it. Tell him you’ll take however much he wants to give._

“I’ve been feeling . . . sentimental, lately,” Hermann says haltingly. He unzips his parka, just a little, and fishes around inside it. “I brought . . . well, with the coding, you see . . . I . . .”

He produces a notebook from the depths of his coat. Perfectly ordinary, black and white, like the kind a child might have in school. He holds it out awkwardly and Newt takes it. “What’s,” he asks, flipping it open, but the question dies in his throat.

It’s full of code. Lines upon lines of it, scrawled in innumerable cheap blue and black ballpoints.

“Is this . . .” Newt says, momentarily forgetting Hannibal Chau, and the kaiju, and everything except what this notebook means.

“Yes,” Hermann says gruffly. Newt realizes he’s turning scarlet. “The coding for Brawler Yukon. Or some of it, anyway. The bits I wrote by hand.”

“This is priceless,” whispers Newt, incredibly moved. “This should be in a museum.”

“I’m giving it to you. If you’ll have it.”

 _“No,”_ Newt gasps. He closes the book with shaking hands, terrified of dropping it into the ocean. “No _way_.”

“Yes way,” says Hermann, with a small smile.

“Dude, your dad would _freak_ if he knew you were giving this to me.”

“My father may have an opinion on my life when he receives _his_ Bundeswehr Cross of Honour.”

That startles a laugh of of Newt, and he covers his mouth to stifle it too late. He presses the notebook close to his chest and doesn’t say anything. It seems impossible to reconcile this man, this _absurd_ human being, with the Hermann who would sleep with Hannibal Chau. But the evidence, Newt reminds himself, the evidence is there. What if Hannibal had coerced him? God, that would be worse. Newt would bite out Hannibal’s throat if he did that.

Was that a Newt thought, or a kaiju thought? The discrepancy frightens him. He clutches the notebook tighter and looks over at Hermann, just as Hermann looks away.

“I, uh,” Hermann says, coughing into his hand. He wobbles a little on his feet, one hand tight on the railing and the other tighter on his cane. He looks vaguely seasick. “I am . . . not good at this.”

“Yeah,” says Newt, dazed.

“The fact is, Newton, this is an extraordinarily foolhardy venture. And there’s every possibility that grievous harm may come to one or both of us,” says Hermann, all in a rush, like he’s trying to force himself to get the words out. “And, well, you see. I thought, yes. So. You understand what I’m saying?”

He looks at Newt hopefully. Newt feels acutely the lack of symbiosis between their brains. “No. I literally no idea what you’re saying.”

Hermann’s throat bobs as he swallows. He looks down at the water again. “I didn’t want to do this here,” he says, after a minute. “On a boat, I mean. With everyone . . . everyone just a room away. And I can’t do it properly, not with my, well, look at me. But. You see, I’ve noticed that a great deal of strain has been put on our relationship recently, and frankly I find that intolerable. To own the truth, the more I think about it, the more intolerable I find it. So, the fact is, I’d like to ask you a question. Before this new chapter of our partnership begins.”

“Yeah, I . . . okay,” says Newt.

“Newton,” Hermann says, as the cabin door swings open, spilling light and music across the empty deck. Tendo hangs his head out and looks at them, smiling when he catches sight of Newt.

“You guys coming?” he asks cheerily. “It’s gonna be all work and no play for a while, so we’re starting up a game of five-card draw. Mr. Chau says you count cards, HG, is that true?”

“Preposterous!” Hermann yelps, turning sharply to face Tendo. “I mean, of course not! Certainly not. That you would even suggest such a thing goes beyond the pale.”

Newt shoves the notebook into his jacket, where Tendo can’t see, and winks at him from over Hermann’s shoulder. Tendo grins and nods slowly. “Of course not . . . right . . . don’t know why I even suggested it.”

Newt rubs his hands together and blows on them. “Let’s go in,” he says, quietly so Tendo doesn’t hear as he ducks back inside. “Spend time with the rest of the family, y’know. Like old times. It’s all going back to the way it was, I guess. Monsters. Robots. Tendo and Mako and . . . Hannibal, I guess, so that’s not really like old times, but . . .”

He clenches his fists, tight, tight, tight, and relaxes again. _Back to the way it was. Before the drift. Before you knew me to the fullest extent of all that I am and found me unsatisfactory_.

“Like old times. Yes, of course,” Hermann says quietly. He catches Newt’s wrist as he walks past him, towards the cabin door. “I am . . . aware that the moment is lost. Let’s just forget this. But could we at least . . . no one is looking. Please.”

Newt lets himself be led backwards and into Hermann’s arms. He shifts a little so he can get his arms tight, too tight, around Hermann’s thin waist, and he presses his cheek against the line of Hermann’s jaw and closes his eyes. Hermann is furnace-hot compared to the sea breeze, and Newt mumbles, “Coat,” just so Hermann will wrap his parka halfway around him, trapping him in a soft layer of warmth. It feels safe. It feels private.

Newt thinks about kissing Hermann’s neck and, unbidden, the thought of Hannibal Chau doing the same rises to the forefront of his mind.

“Herm?” he mumbles.

“Hmm?” Hermann’s eyes are closed, his head leaning against Newt’s. His pulse is a slow, steady comfort against Newt’s skin.

“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Herm?”

“I would never.”

Newt stares out across the dark water, and says nothing.

 

He hates the island at once.

The air is hot and damp, and smells of wet seaweed and old fruit. They’re given a room to themselves, thankfully, and there’s a window facing inland, towards a dense tree line, and beyond that the sheer, craggy cliff faces where the terrain gains in altitude. Hannibal’s resort complex- one of his few legitimate business ventures, he likes to brag- is spread out over a number of campuses across the island. Newt has to take an open-air jeep to get from building to building, squinting against the sea breeze as he tries not to hit potholes.

Hannibal had shut the place down completely. No visitors, tourists, or intrepid journalists. No one enters but his own people, and they take the better part of a week to start smuggling scraps out of Oblivion Bay. No one leaves, period. Newt finds he doesn’t have the will to argue with him.

There’s a shipping hanger on the eastern side of the island, where the illegitimate half of Hannibal’s legitimate business ventures are attended to. Thanks to Hermann’s mockups and Mako’s familiarity with Romeo Blue, (from whom a majority of their scraps have been sourced,) the process of getting Project Skeleton Jaeger underway is surprisingly swift. Newt admires her like he admires the sun; he doesn’t dare look too long.

She’ll have close to three hundred of the best riggers and underground engineers in Hong Kong jumping at her every word soon. Back in Sydney, before the Breach had even been found, let alone closed, Newt had had at least thirty K-Sci officers working under him in the Xenobiology department. Not that it mattered, anyway. Their budget had been slashed, and slashed, and slashed, until it had been not thirty xenobiologists in the Sydney Shatterdome but thirty worldwide. Then twenty. Then ten. Then so few that they’d had to share a lab space with the equally dwindling Breach Physics department. And then . . .

Well. Then it was him and Hermann, together at the end of the world.

 

It scares Newt to see how everyone has slipped so swiftly into their usual roles. He wanders from place to place with a shadow of his former enthusiasm, doing his best to keep the place running, keep everyone’s mind on the project. A difficult task, as, per necessity, nobody has a full grasp of what they’re doing. Information is dispensed on a need-to-know basis, and only Hannibal’s inner circle needs to know.

It’s incredible to watch him work. Hannibal seems perfectly in his element in such a place. Hands in his pockets, walking with the heavy, rolling gait of a Jaeger striding through the ocean. He’s impossible to ignore, and impossible to dismiss.

Every time Newt thinks about him his heart sinks a little further down into his shoes. He doesn’t tell Hermann. He doesn’t tell anyone. He feels shamed and impotent and scared, and if there’s one thing Newt has never been, it’s brave.

 

Occasionally, very occasionally, Newt forgets his jealousy. Some new, interesting thing will shine into his soul like the beam of a Jaeger’s spotlight, and ease the pain. An extra hour of sleep in his own room. A particularly satisfying hiss as he watches one of Romeo Blue’s fins being welded together. The feeling of sand on his feet as he trudges back up the beach after a long day, his boots in one hand and his glasses in the other.

More than anything else, it’s his friends. Sometimes Newt will spend long hours keeping Tendo company while he’s hunched over on his laptop, working on their connection with the sea beacons and pulling up more information on the new kaiju. The hotel and main body of Hannibal’s resort is situated near the beach on the southern half of the island, and Tendo spends most of his time on the balcony outside his room, sheilding his laptop from the sun with one hand and typing with the other. “You’re lobster red, dude,” Newt says once, just once, and laughs when Tendo almost pushes him off the balcony.

 

Tendo shows Newt the specs on the kaiju over a late lunch one sunny afternoon. The one that’s falling apart is incomplete, as predicted, but it’s alive and slowly reconstituting itself as time passes. Tendo describes it as a vaguely mammalian beast, with powerful hind legs and antlers that span the length of a football field.

The other, he says, is bigger.

This one is flat and wide, like a manta ray, with a long, ribbed projection out the back, tapering into a sting. It’s simply lying at the bottom of the ocean. Sleeping. For all they know, it’s dreaming of R’lyeh.

 

Raleigh has the saddest eyes Newt has ever seen, and by far the brightest smile. Newt suspects he’s the only person on the island who feels more useless than he does, and they end up spending quite a bit of time together as a result. They talk about the living- _he’s retired now, somewhere in Perth. Chuck’s death was harder on him than he’ll ever admit-_ and the dead- _dude, you gotta come back to Hong Kong when this is over. They’re almost done the memorial_. And they talk about Mako.

Newt can tell he misses her. God, Newt wishes he didn’t know what that felt like. But Mako spends day after day in the shipping hanger on the other side of the island, a bumpy jeep ride away, and Raleigh is restless without her company. “I’d get in the way,” he says ruefully, when Newt asks him. “She doesn’t need me. I pilot Jaegers, I don’t build them. I’d only distract her.”

“And you’re not bitter about it?” Newt says, incredulous. “Dude, if I had half your chill.”

Raleigh shakes his head, smiling sadly. They’re sitting out on the beach, watching the waves roll in. The water looks darker now, and dirtier. It’s looked that way ever since K-Day. “No way. We always wind up back in each other’s orbit again. I’m not about to get sour about it, but . . . you know. That’s just how it is. I miss her.”

Newt feels something twinge in his heart, an awful little _why can’t you be more like Raleigh_ twinge that he hastily shuts down, boxes up, and stows away with the rest of his repressed anxieties.

 

He rarely sees Hermann anymore.

Newt’s beginning to wonder if Hermann has even seen the sun since they got here. He spends hours on end barricaded in the basement, in a dark little coding room set up to his “exacting specifications.” He showers only occasionally. He barely eats.

Newt would be out of his mind with worry if Hermann didn’t occasionally appear, wraith-like, in the hallways of Hannibal’s resort. Lurching along to some undisclosed location, and if Newt asks, Hermann will say, “I have to talk to Hannibal,” and ask if Newt wants to come with him.

Newt never does. He watches Hermann’s retreating back and wants to kick a wall.

They both sleep odd hours, getting in their rest whenever and wherever they can. The nightmares are becoming unmanageable, and without the incentive of sleeping at Hermann’s back every night, Newt simply doesn’t bother with returning to their room. _Their_ room hardly seems appropriate, since Hermann has slept in his coding room more nights than not, and Newt has crashed on every couch on the island in a kind of muted protest.

He hates this.

He really, really hates this.

Turning to Hermann now, after days of mutual cold-shouldering, is a prospect which looms over Newt’s head like the thought of a painful but necessary surgery. He could knock on Hermann’s door at any time, but that would mean confronting the issue. It would mean walking head-first into the tangled cloud of guilt and doubt and longing that thoughts of Hermann now conjure up. It would be better, a hundred thousand times better, if they just _fought_ over it already. Shouted and screamed and hurled plates and insults. Are you sleeping with Hannibal Chau? Yes, Newton, I am. Now sod off.

 _Unless I can convince him I’m worthwhile,_ Newt thinks helplessly. _Maybe one more time will convince him. One more time before I stop pretending I haven’t lost him._

 

Newt turns forty in less than a week’s time and Hermann hasn't said a word.

Under Mako’s watchful eye, the framework of a torso is beginning to form. The distinctive color of Romeo Blue has long since chipped away, and when mixed with bits of Tacit Ronin and other Mark I’s, it can hardly continue to be called Romeo Blue.

They haven’t named it yet. They will, soon.

Outside, the night air is hot and sticky. The dark waves sluice unearthly patterns into the sand as they break against the shore. Newt wonders about the ratio between the size of the waves and the grooves in the sand. If there’s a regular pattern to them, something that could be predicted, Hermann would know.

Newt takes a deep breath. Tonight’s the night he performs the amputation.

So he showers until his skin is pink and raw, and afterwards he gives himself a much-needed shave in the bathroom mirror, until his jaw is smooth and he looks like maybe he _isn’t_ a lost cause at thirty-nine. As he’s getting dressed he deliberates for a long while over his tattoos, which sheathe him in color from hip to collarbone. Hermann likes them, or at least, he’s told Newt that he does. But back in Tokyo, he’d said, hadn’t he? _I detest kaijus, Newton_.

Newt digs around in his luggage and manages to dig up a decent shirt, black, with long sleeves to cover his tattoos and no shortage of wrinkles from being crammed into the bottom of his bag. He tries to smooth it out against his thigh, to no visible results. His hands are shaking. He tries not to think about that.

He buttons it up to the throat but it’s not quite enough to hide the tattoo of Otachi’s tongue curling up his neck. “It’s fine,” he mutters irritably, and damn it, is that his voice? He sounds like a ten year old who smokes. “It’s fine!” he says again, louder, as he furiously searches his luggage again, this time for cufflinks. All his cufflinks are novelty Pokémon themed. This is already a fucking disaster.

It takes Newt almost an hour and a half before he deems himself presentable enough to go down to Hermann’s room. He’s unreasonably grateful that no one passes him in the hallway on the way there, but it’s a hot, peaceful night outside, and everyone who isn’t working is probably asleep already, or passing the time with a deck of cards. He knows that’s what Raleigh and Tendo are doing.

Hermann’s door is closed, and unmarked. Newt takes a deep breath before knocking.

“Yes, yes, come in,” says Hermann, sounding distracted.

When Newt opens the door he finds the room looking more or less the way he expected; dark, cramped, and full of papers and discarded notebooks stacked up in heaps along the walls and floor. There’s a blackboard propped up against the wall just behind Hermann, surprisingly unmarked, and Hermann himself is sitting at a desk facing the door. The desk holds a variety of holograph projection displays, all of which are turned off.

Hermann’s eyes are red from staring at the screen of his laptop, but he looks up when he sees Newt come in, and immediately his expression of concentration is replaced by one of hope. “Newton,” he smiles. “Is Hannibal with you?”

Newt’s heart sinks. “No,” he says, straightening his posture a little. “No, just me.”

Hermann doesn’t seem unduly disappointed by this. He pushes his chair out a little from his desk as Newt approaches him, but doesn’t stand. “I’m glad to see you,” he says gratefully. “I’ve really got to focus on the task at hand, Newton, but it was good to see your face. You look well, I must say. What an excellent tan.”

“Thanks,” says Newt bleakly. “It’s the sun.”

_Listen to us. We sound like strangers._

Newt takes a deep breath, and steels his nerve. It’s now or never, so before Hermann can say more, Newt is already on his knees, fumbling with Hermann’s belt. “H-hey,” he mutters, “I’m not good at seduction. Right to business, yeah?”

“Newton, what on earth?” Hermann stammers. He catches Newt’s wrists with his hands, holds them still. “You- let it be known, first of all, that you are _very_ good at seduction, but this is not- Newton, are you quite well?”

“Please,” Newt pleads, past caring how desperate he sounds. He shakes Hermann’s hands off and finishes unbuckling his belt. “Please, just let me. You can keep working. It’ll be good. It’ll be so good, I promise.”

Hermann doesn’t say no, and that’s good enough, right? But he does run his hand through Newt’s hair, down to the back of head, and it feels so fucking good that Newt lets his eyes fall closed, leaning forward to mouth wetly at Hermann’s clothed erection. “Love you, man,” he mutters vaguely as Hermann’s fingertips find the back of his neck. “Love you so . . . fucking . . . love . . .”

“Newt,” Hermann whispers, and fuck, he _never_ calls Newt that. Newt groans as he finally draws out Hermann’s cock, pressing a wet, open-mouthed kiss against the base before he works his tongue up the shaft. He hears a dull thump from somewhere above him as Hermann’s head falls back against the blackboard.

There it is at last, that silent, tight breathing, and the throb of Hermann’s rabbit-fast pulse beginning to quicken. This, at least, means Newt is doing something right. He takes Hermann’s cock a little too deep- lets it slip into the warm, tight grip of the back of his throat- and Hermann’s hips jerk against the seat. Newt rests his hands on Hermann’s thighs, steadying him without holding him down. _It’s okay_ , he thinks desperately. _Go on. Fuck my throat if that’s what you want_.

Newt closes his eyes to better savor the taste, in case this is the last time he gets to make love to Hermann’s cock with his mouth. Hermann’s hand is still warm and heavy against the back of Newt’s head, but he makes no move to guide him or to force him down. Newt groans around Hermann’s cock and hears Hermann choke back a matching sound. Breathless, he pulls back off Hermann’s cock just enough to sop up the stray saliva with his tongue. “This is good, right?” Newt says weakly, and fuck, he didn’t mean to say that. “This is good enough?”

 _“Newt,”_ Hermann says again, and there’s something in his voice that’s halfway between passion and fear. Something creaks loudly outside the door, and then the squeal of the door being wrenched open without so much as a knock, and then Hermann’s hand is on Newt’s shoulder as he shoves him down under the desk and out of sight.

Newt freezes, his heart rate skyrocketing. He can hear his blood ringing in his ears. His mouth is still dripping with Hermann’s precum.

“It ain’t fuckin’ healthy,” rumbles the low, confident voice of Hannibal Chau from somewhere above Newt’s head. “You’ve been down here for days, seems like. Have you even seen the sun?”

It’s cramped down here, and dark. Fortunately Newt is already kneeling, his legs tucked tightly under him. He’ll lose all feeling in them soon. Hermann’s impossibly long legs take up most of the space on either side of him; he’s pressed his chair tight up against the desk, in an effort to hide his state. “I’ve, ah,” he says weakly, and Newt wishes he could see the look on his face. He can imagine him wide-eyed and guilty, his face drained of color.

Newt licks his lips, and clenches his fists tight in his lap. Then he leans forward and breathes a warm, silent breath against Hermann’s cock.

“I owe it,” Hermann says, his words far too carefully calm. “To everyone . . . on this island . . . to keep working . . . until I’m done.”

“You’re gonna burn yourself out, Hermann.”

The sound of that name in Hannibal’s mouth makes Newt want to scream. Instead he takes Hermann’s cock in his mouth, and with agonizing slowness, lets it slide along his tongue into his throat. He fucking loves Hermann’s cock; it’s cut, and big enough to make his voice rasp if he takes it too deep for too long.

“I’m used to burnout,” says Hermann, and his voice cracks on the last syllable. His cock is leaking profusely by now and Newt laps it up greedily, nursing at it like it’s the only thing keeping him alive. Some sick, masochistic corner of Newt’s brain is enjoying this. He’s so hard it’s almost painful. _Go on then,_ he thinks wildly, as the desk creaks and settles around him under Hannibal’s weight. _Let me suck your cock while you talk to him. My mouth on your cock while you imagine it’s his._

“Oh yeah? Well maybe it’s not all about you, you goddamn moron,” says Hannibal.

Hermann lets out an awkward, shaky laugh, just as Newt moves lower to run his tongue along Hermann’s balls. “Is- is that right?”

“Geiszler’s lookin’ as dead as one of his specimens,” Hannibal says. His voice is a little quieter now. Almost kind. “Might do for you to check up on him now and then. Boy keeps looking out at the ocean and sighing like you left him at the goddamn altar.”

“Oh, I _assure_ you,” says Hermann, and Newt can _hear_ him talking through gritted teeth. “I’ll be having words with him.”

“You fuckin’ better,” Hannibal grunts. “Then get yourself an aspirin and a night’s sleep, you look like death warmed over.”

Newt goes still on Hermann’s cock, warming it in his mouth as he listens intently for any kind of movement. The desk groans softly as Hannibal stops leaning on it. Then there’s the unmistakable jingle of his shoes against the floor. The doors squeaks once again. Then silence.

And then Hermann’s hands are in Newt’s hair, forcing his head down, and he comes not with a tense silence but with a snarl, a furious “You _twat,_ ” that rings in Newt’s ears after he says it. Newt, already hard and aching for release along with Hermann, comes as he swallows, and he strangles back his groan even though there’s no longer a reason to be silent. He barely has a moment to resurface, gasping for air, before Hermann’s hands are white-knuckled in the collar of his shirt and he’s being dragged out from under the desk like a misbehaving dog.

“What was _that?”_ Hermann hisses, keeping his voice down even though he too knows there’s no reason to anymore. “What _was_ that? Are you alright? We’ve been dancing around each other for days and now this? Newton for fuck’s sake wipe your mouth and talk to me! Did you _shave?_ Why in God’s name do you look so good?”

“Are you implying that I don’t look good every goddamn day of my life?” Newt says drily, his voice still hoarse from Hermann’s cock.

 _“Newton,”_ says Hermann, and he says it with such intensity that Newt is momentarily shocked out of his post-orgasmic daze. “You’re _terrifying_ me. Did I offend you on Hannibal’s boat, is that it? Did I offend you so badly that you can scarcely be in the same room with me for more than a minute?”

Newt shoves Hermann’s hands off and pushes himself, wobbling, to his feet. “It always comes back to Hannibal with you, doesn’t it, huh?”

Hermann stands too, planting his cane in the ground and hoisting himself up on it. He looks livid. “And what, pray, is that supposed to mean?”

“Why haven’t we been fighting like we used to?” Newt demands, even as he realizes, with a sudden swoop of exhilaration in his belly, that they’re on the cusp of a fight right now. “Why haven’t we been _fucking_ like we used to?”

“I have been _working,_ Newton!” Hermann yells. He looks like he’s about to burst a vein. “Working on _your idea!_ By _God_ you narcissistic, self-destructive embarrassment of a scientist! The whole world simply _must_ revolve around you, every hour of the day! Never mind that _my_ whole world revolves around you, oh no, Herr Doktor Geiszler will insist on reordering the heavens themselves until he gets what he wants!”

Newt throws his hands in the air. “Before all this shit, then! What about then?”

“I was working for Hannibal Chau, then!” Hermann punctuates the sentence with a hard jab at the center of Newt’s chest.

“Again with Hannibal!” Newt’s whole body is vibrating with pent-up energy and it’s making him feel sick. He feels the sudden, crazy urge to run for it. “You know dude, I ragged on your shitty clothes for _years_ and you didn’t change! Not a thing, never changed for me or anyone else! But now Hannibal Chau comes along and it’s all slick black suits and gold rings and canes made of kaiju _whatever_ , and I know, I know I’m not anything at all like him but Jesus _fuck_ you could at least let me down easy instead of leaving me to find out on my own because newsflash, Hermann, _I can’t read your mind!”_

Hermann is breathing hard, like he’s been running. They’re standing almost nose to nose, and Newt realizes with a pang of guilt that Hermann’s grip is white-knuckled on his cane, and he’s having difficulty keeping upright.

“What exactly are you implying, Newton?” he asks coldly.

Newt grits his teeth. “You’ve been trying to impress him. Don’t, don’t deny that.”

Hermann looks down at him and wrinkles his nose in distaste. “Fine,” he says shortly. “I won’t deny it.”

“And,” Newt swallows. “And do you maybe wanna tell me why?”

Hermann says nothing.

“Because, funny thing, you know, I think I know why.”

“Is that right?”

“You’re sleeping with him.”

The words, quietly spoken, fall with a great finality between them.

Hermann has gone very, very still. Newt keeps his eyes carefully trained somewhere around Hermann’s collarbone, and doesn’t even try to look in his eyes. After a moment his gaze sinks lower, to Hermann’s hand clutching his cane. Waiting for the fuse to burn down, and the inevitable explosion to follow.

“Well,” says Hermann, and the tight, forced calm in his voice is far worse than shouting. “I certainly do apologize if your impression of me is that of a man who would be unfaithful. And I’m sorry if I’m not the romantic, doting Prince Charming you envisioned when you were seventeen and lonely enough to throw yourself at anyone who’d have you.”

Newt looks up sharply, and is met with a horrible, pained look in Hermann’s eyes. The ring of blood in his eye, identical to Newt’s, is particularly noticeable at this distance. _Matching rings,_ Newt thinks, and lets out a hysterical little, “Ha!”

“I myself have never thrown myself at anyone,” Hermann continues, still in that horribly calm voice. “Let alone a criminal. A criminal who, I might add, I have been working for for your sake and your sake _ALONE!”_

This last word is so loud, it sounds like he’s trying to bring down the whole room.

Hermann looks ready to hurl his cane against the wall. There’s a look of such anger and hurt on his face that Newt can barely stand it, doesn’t know how he’s ever going to forgive himself. “He didn’t want to hire you, Newton!” Hermann rages, gesticulating furiously in the air with his other hand. “You think you’re so indispensable! You are to me, but not to him, can’t you see that? He’s a fucking _animal,_ Newton! He came to me first! Me! And I told him I’d do it if he hired you too, I said we go together, why? Because there’s nowhere else on the planet you can get kaiju parts like he has, Newton! Nowhere else! And if we were working for him, you’d be kept busy. You’d have so much to do. Pursuing your passion.”

The effort of keeping himself standing while shouting himself hoarse seems to overwhelm Hermann at that moment, and he shoos Newt wearily away so he can sit down. There’s a look of exhausted reluctance on his face as he leans his cane against the desk, and runs a hand through his own hair.

“Of course I’ve been trying to impress him,” he says weakly. “If I get fired, you get fired. And he’ll kill us rather than let us go, Newton. You know he will. Do you think I enjoy hurling myself into my work, to the detriment of my health? But you do enjoy that, don’t you. You don’t understand that I do it for you, Newton, I do it because I love you. And then, and then you go and have the _utter gall_ to accuse me of . . . of . . .”

He peters out into a confused, helpless silence, and looks up at Newt from where he sits. “I’m sorry,” he says, in a very small voice. “I’ve been neglecting you. I know it. I . . . didn’t think it was this bad. I know I’m not easy, or convenient, or in any way ideal, but . . . I had hoped you . . . you . . .”

Newt falls to his knees in front of Hermann’s chair and kisses him desperately, his grip firm on either side of Hermann’s face. “I’m sorry,” he stammers, and it’s not enough, it’s never going to be enough, _God_ if he could just tell him without stupid, stumbling, useless words. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t, I don’t, I’ve never had _anyone_ keep me this long and I don’t, I don’t know how to . . .”

“It’s my fault,” Hermann shakes his head miserably. “I should’ve said something. I should never have neglected you.”

“I’m fucking psychotic.”

“You are _not._ ”

“You’re like the _one thing_ that never changed, and then you just, you started changing and I just, Herm . . .”

Newt hears Hermann swallow audibly as he puts his hand on Newt’s shoulder. “We need . . . we need to rest. We need to think about what our priorities are.”

“Yeah,” Newt mutters. “I kind of want to forget tonight ever happened.”

“As do I,” Hermann says quietly. He runs his hands down Newt’s arms, till he can hold both his hands in his. “I think we should go back to our room. Sleep, I think, will do us both some . . . Newton, your cufflinks don’t match,” he says, frowning in confusion.

“They’re, uh,” says Newt. He sniffs wetly, rubs his nose with the back of his wrist. “They’re, uh, Kanto region gym badges.”

Hermann nods sagely, as though that means something to him, and the gesture is so harmlessly familiar that Newt almost feels better.

“Do you even know where our room is?” he asks, as they stand up. He’s glad Hermann is not above leaning on him for support, so he wraps his arm tightly around Hermann’s waist and pretends it’s out of necessity. Newt feels utterly exhausted by the day’s events. He can feel his own release, still sticky in his jeans, and grimaces at the thought of it drying.

“This place is so ghastly big,” Hermann mutters. “Haven’t the foggiest idea.”

“Hey,” Newt says softly. “Did you really take this job just so I could keep working with kaiju specimens?”

“Mm-hmm,” grunts Hermann, not looking at him.

It’s a curt little grunt of confirmation that makes a smile tug at the corner of Newt’s mouth. He bumps his forehead against Hermann’s temple and closes his eyes. “I’m gonna spend the rest of my life,” he says, with all the sincerity in the world, “making up for tonight.”

He hopes Hermann knows that he means it.


	8. 3, 2, 1, Let's Jam

Newt squints at the sun across the water, and pulls his shirt off over his head. At this hour, the sunset illuminates the island in a creamsicle-orange glow. Newt throws his shirt carelessly onto the sand and sits down to tug off his boots. “I’m going in.”

Beside him, Hermann is gingerly laying down beach towels, each of them dark red and embroidered with Hannibal Chau’s distinctive golden logo. “You’ll be frozen to death.”

“Um, I’ll be _refreshed_ to death,” says Newt, just as Hermann opens an umbrella with a loud _fwmph_ and props it up behind him. Newt does his best disapproving English snort. “That umbrella’s not gonna help us look at stars, dude.”

“I will remove it when the sun goes down,” says Hermann, carefully lowering himself down onto the towels. Newt leans back on his elbows and cants his hips up, the better to slide down his jeans. He’s got his swim trunks on underneath them, and Newt enjoys imagining that he can hear Hermann’s breath catch.

He rolls over onto his belly, thoroughly covered in sand, and grabs Hermann’s hand so he can kiss the heel of his thumb. “You sure you don’t wanna take a layer off? Your shoes? _Anything?”_

“I’m good,” says Hermann quietly, but he’s smiling, and Newt doesn’t press the issue. Instead he leans forward to plant a kiss on Hermann’s cheek before pushing himself to his feet. He stretches his arms up over his head and groans, just for show, and looks over his shoulder just in time to see Hermann look quickly away. _“Green_ swim trunks?” he says gruffly. “Really, you clash with your own outfit.”

Newt sighs in a long-suffering way and looks down. “Yeah, dude. You’re probably right.” Then he pulls them down and steps out of them.

 _“Newton,”_ Hermann says in a pained voice. “Someone will _see._ ”

“Who’s gonna see? We’re far enough out from the hotel,” says Newt airily, walking down the beach towards the water.

He can feel Hermann’s eyes on him as he gets to the water’s edge. When the seawater rolls up against Newt’s legs as the waves come in he yelps and stumbles back across the sand. “Okay!” he shivers, waving his hands in defeat. “Okay! Okay, I’ll admit it, that’s cold. That’s seriously cold.”

There are shells though, down where the water meets the beach. What looks like hundreds of them, most of them shattered but a few still intact. Newt picks through a few of the shinier ones, mentally noting their nomenclature as he goes, and when the waves wash over his hands he starts getting used to the cold. He feels a twinge of pity as he finds a few bluish, mutated clam shells, looking patchy and warped. It continues to astound him, from a scientific standpoint, that life can continue to thrive at all in the Pacific. Even if not all of it is quite as it was before.

He finds a broken nautilus shell that excites him tremendously, and this he brings back up the beach, to where Hermann is still lying on his towels and watching him with his eyes half-closed. Newt stands over him with his hands still dripping and offers him the shell.

Hermann takes it and inspects it. “A perfect logarithmic spiral,” he says, smiling. “Even broken, its mathematical perfection is still evident.”

 _“Nautilus pompilius,”_ says Newt. He looks up to check the position of the sun, and finds that it’s almost touched the water. Soon it will be gone completely, and there’ll be stars.

“You’re dripping on me,” says Hermann. Newt looks back down at him and grins, putting one leg over Hermann and lowering himself to straddle him. Hermann sits up, running his hands up the technicolored curve of Newt’s back and down again to the unmarked skin below his waist. He presses a chaste kiss to Newt’s cheek. “And you’re getting sand all over my towels.”

“You want me to sit somewhere else?”

“No.”

Newt’s laugh devolves into a pleased hum when Hermann kisses him again, moving from his cheek to the corner of his mouth, and then his mouth proper. He runs his tongue lightly along Hermann’s lower lip, and when Hermann opens his mouth to let him in Newt’s whole body seems to light up with the excitement of it. God, he loves Hermann’s mouth more than he’ll ever be able to say. He wants to spend a lifetime studying it.

Three days of this. Three whole days of setting work aside when the sun goes down and devoting their evenings exclusively to each other. Newt had expected someone to call them out on it, demanding an explanation for Newt’s good mood and Hermann’s sudden desire to be social.

No one had. Not even Hannibal Chau.

Newt keeps one eye on the horizon as the sun sinks into the sea, though his attention is mainly focussed on Hermann, and specifically on the soft place just under the line of his jaw that Newt has been aching to nibble at. Only when the stars begin to gleam through the canopy of darkness, and the sand has gone blue in the moonlight, does Newt guide Hermann down onto his back again and lie down next to him. He’s already breaking out in gooseflesh from the night air, but before he can complain about it Hermann has his arm around him and is tucking him close against his side. Newt’s groping has left damp seawater handprints all over Hermann’s shirt, much to Newt’s delight.

“I love this,” Newt says, resting his head against Hermann’s chest. “This is so fucking good for me.”

“Oh I _know,_ ” Hermann says, his eyes on the sky. He’s smiling. “You can’t see anything like this in Hong Kong.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Newt brushes his fingertips against Hermann’s wrist. “But I mean . . . this. Three days of this has been . . . It’s been really great.”

Hermann takes Newt’s hand, stilling its incessant motion, and kisses it. His breath is hot and damp against Newt’s palm. They haven’t yet talked about that night on Hannibal’s boat, when they’d left the smog-smothered city of Hong Kong behind them. Hermann hasn’t mentioned the notebook again.

Newt desperately hopes that he will.

But for now, this is enough. Just him, and his breath on Newt’s hands. That is so much more than enough.

“On this day, in 1990,” says Hermann, as Newt rolls his eyes skyward. “The vain and remarkable Monica Schwartz gave birth to the twice vain and _twice_ remarkable Newton Geiszler.”

“Much to her chagrin,” Newt adds in a quiet mutter. Hermann squeezes his hand, and Newt tilts his head up to put his mouth against Hermann’s ear. “You know what forty means, right? It means we’re the same age again,” and then, in a sing-song voice, “You can’t call me _boy_ anymore.”

“Oh I don’t think you’ll ever outgrow that,” says Hermann fondly. The thought makes something hot and happy bloom in Newt’s heart.

They lie together in the darkness, and Newt feels like being quiet. Hermann names stars like old friends, introducing Newt to each one, and when the night air grows cold and Newt begins to seriously regret his impulsive nakedness, Hermann wraps his arms around him and pulls Newt on top of him. “You should put your clothes back on,” he murmurs into Newt’s hair.

“Yeah? You don’t sound convinced.”

Hermann’s laugh is the sweetest, most breathless sound Newt has ever heard. It sounds like the first scratch on new vinyl.

 

“Are you alright back there, Dr. Geiszler?” Mako Mori asks, twisting around in her seat to look at Newt. Her wide-brimmed hat hides her eyes but not her smile, or the red streaks in her hair that are fading to a dusky pink in the sun. Her elbow leaves a smudge of black grease on the headrest.

Newt opens his mouth just as Hermann hits another rocky patch in the road, and Newt bounces a couple inches off the seat as the jeep makes a go at airplane turbulence. “I’m- whoa, _whoa shit!”_

“It’s not my fault that these bloody roads are so poorly maintained!” Hermann blusters, swatting Newt’s hand away when he reaches over his shoulder. “Perhaps if you’d deign to put on a seatbelt!”

Newt, who is frankly shocked that he hasn’t fallen out of the backseat and into the road by this point, looks at Mako and twirls a finger at his temple. Mako gives him a falsely stern look, and turns back to talk to Hermann.

The progress she’s been making back at the shipping hangar is incredible. Newt cranes his neck over his shoulder and catches the glimpse of one blocky gray corner of the building before it vanishes into the trees. The Jaeger looks not unlike Romeo Blue now, with most of its exoskeleton in place. The same small, crested head, and two “angel wing” fins projecting from each shoulder. The experimental chest fin, designed to protect the Conn-Pod from attack, could not be salvaged. Mako had omitted it from her blueprints, along with the gatling system.

Newt gestures for Mako to pass back her clipboard, which she does, as Hermann begins to rhapsodize on the virtues of the _crocus ultima,_ or the “Plutonic Furnace” meant to function as the heart of their unnamed Jaeger. Mako Mori is perhaps the only person alive, other than Newt, who can get away with calling Hermann by his first name in public. It is for precisely this reason that she only ever calls him Dr. Gottlieb, as one of the innumerable little gestures of familiarity between them.

“I am going to need that back when we get to the hotel,” Mako tells Newt, raising her voice a little to be heard over the slipstream.

“Hang on, I’m making very important scientific notations,” says Newt, flipping the clipboard over to draw on the back. He produces a Sharpie from his shirt pocket and uncaps it with his teeth.

“Thankfully Mr. Chau was able to procure a _crocus ultima_ engine for us. Not that I want to know how,” Hermann is telling her, his attention divided between Mako and the road. “He says it will be here in a week’s time.”

“I will thank him when I see him,” Mako says doubtfully, gripping the edges of her seat when they go over a particularly hazardous bump. “I do not . . . _like_ Hannibal Chau. Not very much.”

Newt hears the unspoken sentiment behind her words. _But Stacker Pentecost had an arrangement with him, and so do I._

They hit another pothole in the road and the clipboard nearly jumps out of Newt’s hands. Overhead, low-hanging branches skim their leaves across the metal frame of the jeep. The air is clear, and the ocean gleams like a sunlit mirror between the trees. Even Hermann admits that this place is paradise, and Newt, with the wind in his hair and his partner close at hand, finds his mind racing with new and exciting possibilities. His thoughts spiral outward, rather than inward. He feels incredible.

“Raleigh’s been talking about you nonstop all day!” Another sharp jolt makes Newt’s Sharpie squeak across the back of the clipboard, ruining the lines. “Fuck. Dammit! Here,” he says, returning Mako’s clipboard over the back of the seat. “It sucks, I’m sorry, but my partner drives like a _maniac!”_

As if in retaliation, Hermann takes the next curve so sharply that Newt slides to the other side of the jeep, nearly toppling out. Newt can see the crinkles at the corners of Hermann’s eyes in the rearview mirror and elects not to berate him for his German driver’s license. Just this once.

“Who is this?” says Mako hesitantly, holding up the clipboard so Hermann can see what’s on the back. “Is this me?”

“It’s Winry Rockbell,” say Newt and Hermann in unison.

“It’s clearly _supposed_ to be,” Hermann adds drily. “The arms are a bit . . . well . . . and the eyes, also.”

“So it’s a bit wonky, alright? I’m out of practice.”

“I think she’s sweet,” says Mako, smiling down at the smudgy drawing. “That wrench she’s holding is very good. But on the whole, it looks quite awful.”

“There go my dreams of being a world-class mangaka.”

Mako’s laughter is quiet and always half-stifled, rarely given but impossible to forget. It never ceases to amaze Newt that he, of all people, can make her laugh.

 

Newt had a vague idea, born of desperation, that if Hermann stayed close by his side every night, the nightmares would go away. They didn’t.

He stays awake, sometimes for hours, afraid of what’s coming. Hermann sleeps with one bony arm slung over Newt’s waist, and his face tucked against Newt’s back. Newt can feel his slow, even breaths between his shoulder blades.

Their room is a pleasant, sleepy blur without his glasses, and Newt struggles to keep his eyes open. He rubs his thumb in slow circles on Hermann’s wrist, quietly enamored with the contrast between Hermann’s unmarked skin and his own.

“Wish I was as brave as you, buddy,” he murmurs, and when he closes his eyes

_he splits the earth with his teeth._

_He can smell the infection. He hunts it down through the annals of their cluster. Beneath the earth there is a squirming virus. It looked into his mind, but he looked back, oh yes, and his creators looked back, and the universe looked back, and there, there, there. That flinching, whimpering thing, full of_

_blood and salt and the slime at the bottom of the seafloor. They put an advanced protocol in his brain to put him to sleep, to make him wait, but they didn’t finish it they didn’t complete his brain and now his brain is wrong and his body is wrong and the nightmares are getting worse it’s time to wake_

_up and left them, but Dad says it’s not his fault she had to go. Dad sits him down with his hands on his shoulders and tells him he didn’t regret the affair, because if he hadn’t had that affair with Mom then you would never have been born, son, and I love you more than I've ever loved anything in my_

_life but it’s his fourth corrective surgery in two years and he’s supposed to be in school. His father is arguing with the doctor, because it doesn’t matter if his father makes six figures, if there’s a cheaper option he’s going to_

_take it._

_He is the first of his kind with wings._

_He is the first of his kind to be made clever. Clever enough to sniff out the infection he’s been sent to excise. He is hungry for it. He could find it even in a swarm of a million billion viruses._

_He wants to wrap his tongue around it and dissolve it down to its constituent parts._

_He wants to wake up._

_He wants to wake up but he_

doesn’t shock awake so much as slither slowly into consciousness, aware that he’s awake but still dreaming as long as his eyes are closed. Newt forces himself to open them. They feel puffy and raw from sleep. The digital clock on the bedside table is telling him it’s one thirty. The nightmares have been kind to him tonight; usually he wakes up sweat-slick and wired.

Hermann is still behind him, but his arm is gone from around Newt’s waist, and Newt can feel him shaking. He rubs the soreness out of his eyes and rolls blearily over, trying to get his hands on Hermann as quickly as possible. “Hey,” he mumbles, barely intelligible. “Hey, hey, hey.”

Hermann is on his back, every limb tensed up tight as he stares at the ceiling. Newt can tell from his breathing and his cold, clammy skin that he’s just woken up too. They share their dreams, more often than not. Newt would have been fascinated by that, once upon a time. Not anymore.

Newt kisses Hermann’s naked shoulder and reaches down to rub his thigh. An instinctive action, born from years of soothing its ache after a long day. “Hey,” he mumbles again, exhaustion slurring his words. “Hey, you’re up. You’re fine. We’re both, we’re both fine.”

Hermann cups his hand over his mouth, drags it down. Then makes a loose twirling motion in the air with one finger.

“Yeah, ‘course. C’mere.”

Hermann shifts a little onto his other side so Newt can snuggle up against his back, with Hermann’s head tucked under his chin. He rests his palm flat against Hermann’s shallow belly and rubs his thumb gently along his skin.

“That good?” he asks quietly. Hermann’s little answering grunt makes something clench in Newt’s heart.

“Gonna be fine,” he murmurs, half delirious from exhaustion. He kisses the top of Hermann’s head and closes his eyes, burying his nose in Hermann’s hair. “Gonna be fine. You and me, partners for life. Gonna curl up around you like a . . . like a dragon around treasure. I’ve got you.”

Hermann takes his hand and uses it to wrap his arm tighter around him. Newt laughs, a private little thing, before he lets sleep pull him back into the dark.

 

Newt mentions the dreams to Tendo over breakfast one Saturday morning, out on the patio. He alternates forkfuls of eggs with swallows of frigid orange juice, and by the time he’s gotten to the “we’re fucked” part, he’s already on his second plate. Behind Tendo, a long way down the beach, Newt can see two distant smudges standing together in the water. Raleigh and Mako sparring in the waves, as they have been for the past week and a half. Readying themselves for the Jaeger’s launch.

“So what you’re telling me,” says Tendo, putting his fork down so he can tent his fingers together, “is that they could start moving any day now?”

Newt taps his temple with one finger. “Yeah dude,” he says solemnly, around mouthful of toast.

“I haven’t picked up any change in their signature-”

“Might be today, might be tomorrow, might be months from now,” Newt says. He takes another gulp of orange juice to punctuate his statement. The glass thunks back down on the table. “I used to think these dreams were just a symptom of a bad drift with an incompatible partner. The hivemind and I, um, we weren’t exactly simpatico? But now that we know there are kaiju on this side of the Breach, and they’re not exactly brain dead . . .”

“. . . you think you’re still connected to their hivemind through a residual drift effect.”

“Exactly.”

“Like Raleigh and Mako. Or you and Dr. Gottlieb.”

“Not like me and him,” Newt says darkly. “But yeah, a connection. Hermann feels it too.”

Tendo grimaces and picks up his fork again, poking at his last egg. He’s been eating less lately, which surprises Newt, given the quality of the hotel catering. Before the Breach had closed, when rationing was more strict than it was these days, Tendo had always been coming up with odd little treats that he’d slip Newt when he came to deliver a report to the lab. Kosher chocolate had been a popular one. The occasional bottle of ramune had been another.

Eventually he gives up on breakfast entirely and pushes his plate away. Newt pushes his aside too out of solidarity and leans across the table. “You know, I think they might be afraid of us.”

“No kidding?”

“They’re disgusted by us, I know that much. And . . . you know, me and Herm, we’re the only human minds they’ve ever touched,” Newt grins shakily, tries to look pleased by this admission rather than pants-wettingly terrified. “As far as they know, all humans have brains like ours. And I think that scares them to death.”

Tendo’s laugh is quiet and knowing and more than a little uncomfortable. Newt can tell he believes him. He almost wishes he didn’t.

 

Hermann knew- both from Newt’s letters and from the drift- that to Newt, infidelity was a complicated and frightening idea, fraught with emotional perils. His dad had done everything he could to remedy this, but as a child, Newt had been difficult to mollify.

Jacob Geiszler was short and dark-eyed and kind. He was friendly with all Newt’s female teachers, and he volunteered enthusiastically at all school functions. He did things like sit backwards on chairs and chew the erasers off pencils. He didn’t worry about anyone or anything, except Newt, which made Newt feel equal parts loved and guilty about being loved.

He never hid the truth from Newt, not even before Monica Schwartz went back to Europe. The fact was, Jacob Geiszler and Monica Schwartz had been happily married when Newt came along. Just not to each other. And the fact was, Monica Schwartz, (for that was always how Newt thought of her, even at that age, as some mysterious and beautiful woman to whom the name _Mom_ could never apply,) could not hope to pursue her career with an emotionally volatile toddler in tow.

When it got bad, really bad, Newt would try to shut himself in his room as a kind of self-imposed exile and yell some stumbling apology for wasting his dad’s time. His voice would crack, of course, just another reminder that he’s a child, and a year away from graduating high school.

Jacob had a bottomless well of patience for talking Newt down from his episodes. “I love you, buddy,” he’d say, or sometimes, “I love you, Pingu,” if it was a _very_ bad day, and when Newt opened the door Jacob would give him a great big hug, and take him downstairs to where his uncle Illia would inevitably be sitting surrounded by delivery pamphlets, unable to make a decision on dinner and desperate for Newt’s much-needed input.

 _I don’t regret you,_ Jacob said, over and over again through the years. _I don’t regret you and I certainly don’t regret raising you. My brother doesn’t either._

Jacob loved Hermann. Thought he was “the absolute shit” as he liked to say. He took a great deal of pleasure in bullying him whenever they came to visit, which Hermann endured with good grace. They would yammer on in German for hours.

Hermann had never met Monica Schwartz. Now that Newt was famous, she had a sudden enthusiasm for motherhood, and called regularly around the holidays and Newt’s birthday. Which would make this year the first in four that he hadn’t had to make a polite excuse to her over the phone as to why Hermann couldn’t come to the phone right now.

Monica Schwartz had loved her husband. Jacob Geiszler had loved his wife. But that had not, ultimately, prevented them from leaving them, and running away to America where their relationship fell apart during Newt’s formative years.

Infidelity began to seem like less of a tragedy, and more of an inevitability.

So he gets jealous sometimes. So what? Newt grinds his teeth together and tries not to think about it, though it’s difficult to think of anything else with Hannibal Chau in the room. He has nothing to fear from him, he knows that now, but the seeds of comparison are already planted and it’s impossible not to feel the difference in their statures.

Hannibal is a full seven inches taller than him. Newt and Hermann are eating dinner with him at the dining room in the hotel that _he owns_ , and when they’re through he clicks his fingers and one of his aides clears their plates for them. He makes it seem easy, ordering people around with wordless commands, and when he deigns to speak he does it in that deep, suffocating voice, so unlike Newt’s shrill squawking.

“Then it fuckin’ choked on me,” he says, in that same deep voice, leaning back in his chair with a satisfied sigh. “Got stuck in its gullet and had to cut myself out with my own balisong. If this guy,” he points at Newt, “had been there when I got out, so help me, I would’ve ripped him a new one for gettin’ me mixed up in that kaiju brain shit in the first place.”

He talks about cutting his way out of a kaiju’s belly like it’s something he does for fun on a Saturday night. Newt takes a sip of water to combat the sudden dryness of his mouth.

“You’re looking remarkably well,” says Hermann, with a mute glance in Newt’s direction as though to say, _I don’t mean anything by it._ “Given what I understand about the corrosive properties of kaiju blue.”

“Lotta expensive surgeries,” Hannibal says drily.

In the shipping hangar on the other side of the island, Mako Mori is teaching three hundred scalpers and improvisational J-tech technicians how to operate the machinery necessary to install a volatile black market Plutonic Furnace into the heart of a Jaeger. Everyone on the island is as tense as a taut spring, waiting for the inevitable island-wide disruption as the _crocus ultima_ fires up for the first time.

Newt is no exception. He keeps glances at his glass to see if it’ll rattle, or produce the perfect, concentric impact ripples from _Jurassic Park_. Carefully, so as not to draw attention, Newt bumps his foot against Hermann’s under the table. He knows how Hermann feels about public displays of affection, particularly around Hannibal Chau, but for once he doesn’t move his foot away. Newt feels a warm rush of gratitude, just as Hannibal’s aide comes back with bowls of fruit rings in jelly.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” says Hannibal, fishing out a ring with one of his chopsticks, “about that guy. The fuck is his name? Tendo?”

“It’s short for Nintendo,” says Newt, who has been fighting a losing battle with chopsticks for years.

“It’s not,” Hermann interjects hurriedly. “It’s not short for Nintendo.”

“I want to know if he’s named the damn kaiju yet.”

“We’ve talked about it a little, sir. He’s thinking Greaser and Hohenheim.”

“Right,” Hannibal grunts. “Huh. Which one’s Greaser?”

Newt opens his mouth to respond and every light in the building goes out. Hermann grips the table, his eyes darting around warily. Newt hooks his foot around Hermann’s ankle- _don’t get up, it’s fine_.

“The fuck was that?” Hannibal growls. He shouts in the direction of the kitchen, “The fuck was that!”

“That’ll be the Plutonic Furnace,” Newt breathes. He becomes aware of a quiet, low-pitched whining sound, slowly escalating in scale and volume. It sounds distant, but grows louder and louder until it’s a consistent metallic screeching. Newt covers his ears, his eyes screwed tight shut.

As quickly as it began, the noise begins to dim, like a generator powering down. The metallic screeching lessens until it’s eclipsed by the sound of the surf outside, and the lights in the dining room turn back on after one or two flickers.

“Shit,” grins Hannibal. He folds his arms in front of his chest. “Is that good? It sounded God-awful.”

“Yes, yes, it’s . . . it’s good, yes,” Hermann says, a little shakily. He releases his grip on the table. “It means the _crocus ultima_ is in place.”

Newt raises a glass of water. “Happy birthday, Skeleton Jaeger!”

“Fuckin’ cheers,” says Hannibal, and they touch glasses. “But I’m not calling it Skeleton Jaeger.”

“I think we should call it the Cowboy Bebop,” says Newt.

“We are certainly _not_ calling it the Cowboy Bebop,” Hermann interjects.

“Frankenjaeger,” says Hannibal. They look at him, and he shrugs his great, sloping shoulders. “Buncha bits and pieces from other, better Jaegers. Why not?”

“What about Space Champion?”

“It’s _my Jaeger,_ ” says Hannibal, which reminds Newt abruptly, _oh yeah, he owns this Jaeger, and us, for the rest of our foreseeable futures_.

Newt swallows. He makes himself smile. “Frankenjaeger it is!”

“Nah, hold on,” says Hannibal, pointing at Newt and Hermann with both hands before sliding the two fingers closer together. “We’ll combine yours and his. _Space Cowboy._ How does that sound, eh? That’s a pretty good name for a robot.”

He laughs. Newt doesn’t think Hannibal’s laugh will ever stop making him flinch.

  

Newt leans over the catwalk railing and looks down, the creases on his boots deepening as he pushes himself up onto his toes. Far below him, 130 feet from end to end, lies the metal body of Space Cowboy, corpselike in its stillness. The vents on either side of its torso are open, and Newt can see the faint violet glow of the furnace at its heart. The gray-clad forms of Hannibal’s scalpers are still crawling across the surface of its chest, putting the finishing touches on the matte-black logo. Slattern’s face shines slick in black paint across the Jaeger’s chest.

“Ten stories,” says Raleigh Becket, leaning his elbow on the railing next to Newt. “Almost exactly half the height of Gipsy Danger.”

“She’s beautiful,” Newt breathes.

“Yeah,” says Raleigh, but he’s looking at Mako.

Across the way from them, in one of the glass-panelled conference rooms lining the second floor, Mako and Hermann are conversing animatedly over a table loaded with miscellaneous refurbished PONS equipment. Newt observes them, unable to hear their words through the glass, but after a moment Mako leans out and flips the switch on the nearby intercom.

 _“Will all workers please clear the floor,”_ she says, enunciating slowly and clearly. Her words echo through the building at a hundred times their natural volume, and the floor begins to clear. _“Will all workers please clear the floor. Thank you.”_

“Do you need to be in there?” Newt asks, as she ducks back into the conference room.

“Not if she’s just testing the way the PONS unit responds,” says Raleigh. “Moving an arm, that’s one thing. Moving the body takes two.”

They watch Mako and Hermann move around each other, Mako positioning her arms at Hermann’s gentle direction, Hermann smiling as he begins to fit her with the brace and wiring.

“She’s just going to trust that it works,” Raleigh says, almost to himself. “He only had that PONS for what, a few months? And he says it’s fully operational?”

“Of course it will work,” Newt says sharply, giving Raleigh a sidelong look. “Do you see her hesitating?”

Raleigh shakes his head minutely. They continue to watch Hermann outfit Mako with the PONS unit, just the headpiece and the connecting brace running down her arm. Her hand is completely enclosed in circuitry and black rubber.

“What’s it like?” Newt asks, the thought having been nagging at the back of his mind. “Drifting with Mako.”

Raleigh ducks his head like he’s been called on in class, but he smiles. “Everyone asks me that. That’s all people want to hear from pilots, you know. Every interview is the same.”

“It’s different for everyone, right? Like the same condition, manifesting itself with different symptoms.”

“It’s hard to put into words, Doctor. You have to experience it for yourself. No one can explain it to you.”

“I _have_ experienced it.”

“Yeah, but,” Raleigh makes a _so-so_ motion with his hand.

Behind the glass windows of the conference room, Newt watches Mako open and close her hand, before nodding at Hermann. “But what?” he asks testily.

“Drifting with a jury-rigged PONS system can never compare to the real thing,” Raleigh says, almost apologetically.

Newt bristles angrily, but swallows down his indignation long enough to pay attention when Hermann depresses the start-up button on the PONS unit. Beneath them, on the hanger floor, the Jaeger begins to move.

It starts with the slow, rattling hum of the _crocus ultima_ heating up. The violet glow from behind the vents grows all the brighter. Newt realizes too late that perhaps it would have been prudent to vacate the catwalk. He looks over at Raleigh, bouncing on the balls of his feet in anticipation, but Raleigh is as still and calm as a king surveying his subjects. He looks almost bored by the sound of Space Cowboy waking up for the first time.

Mako steadily raises her arm and opens and closes her fist. Space Cowboy’s arm lifts with a dangerous, almost haunting creaking sound, and mimics the action. Newt stares at it, and feels his heart begin to race with excitement. It’s the same jubilation Frankenstein must have felt, before the monster opened his eyes.

Mako lowers her arm, just as slowly, and the Jaeger’s arm follows suit. The violet glow and the hum of the furnace begin to fade in unison, and only when the Jaeger has fallen completely still does Mako remove her headset.

 _You try building a PONS out of garbage and defunct neural code, asshole,_ Newt wants to say. _What I shared with him was real. It was._

What he says instead is, “I want to know how it felt for _you._ You and Mako. What was it like?”

“You really want to know?” Raleigh asks, and he sounds sincere.

“Yeah, I do.”

Raleigh purses his lips, seemingly lost in thought. “It was like a treehouse,” he says finally. “When I was a kid, Yance and me had a treehouse. It was like our hideout. Where we’d make our plans. After he died, I kind of . . . hid. Up in that treehouse. Didn’t have to face the world, there. There it was just me and my brother. Y’know?”

Newt knows.

“And Mako . . . It was like I’d been up in that treehouse, a kid with a broken toy, for years. And then suddenly there’s this girl I don’t know, and she’s pointing up at the rope I climbed to my grief, and she’s asking, really gently, _Can I play too?”_

Raleigh’s expression is impossibly sad. He runs his thumb along the seams of his gloves, but he looks past them, down at the Jaeger below. “Drifting with her was like letting down that rope. Letting her climb up, so we could play,” He smiles a little nervously. “She’s better with words than me. Doesn’t say much, but always picks her words just right.”

“I dunno, man,” says Newt, a little awed. “That was beautiful.”

Raleigh’s laugh is disbelieving, and a little wistful. He bumps Newt with his shoulder, but he has eyes only for Mako, who has just caught his eye from across the room. She gives him a little wave. He waves back.

 

Newt runs his tongue along his lips and gasps, his chest rising and falling as he slowly regains his breath. Hermann is still mouthing at his neck, with increasing messiness as the exhaustion of his release begins to take him. He murmurs something soft and indistinct, like a kitten’s meow.

 _“Schatzi, Schatzi,”_ Newt murmurs in agreement, reaching up to stroke Hermann’s back as he lies on top of him. _“Mein Drachenschatz.”_

Hermann leaves one last kiss on Newt’s collarbone before rolling off him with a groan of discomfort. He stretches, his body impossibly long against the sheets. He looks thoroughly wrung-out.

Newt runs his fingertips along his own shoulders and collarbone, over the dull indents of teeth still visible on his tattooed skin. “Hey actually maybe _you’re_ the dragon.”

“You drove me to it,” Hermann says lazily, closing his eyes. “You are insatiable and demanding.”

“Oh is that right?”

“Mmm.”

“Maybe I’ll let _you_ set the pace next time.”

Hermann opens one eye and squints at him. “I believe you’d need to borrow my cane to walk.”

Newt laughs, startled. “I don’t think I can walk _now.”_

“I implore you, try.”

Newt gives Hermann a playful shove on the shoulder and ducks out of the way when Hermann tries to shove him back. “I love how goofy you get when you’re happy,” he says warmly, thoroughly delighted to discover that when he gets out of bed, walking is a task that leaves him sore and aching wonderfully. Their robes are still on the chair by the balcony door- the blue one crumpled carelessly over the arm, the golden one neatly folded- and Newt takes the blue one and tugs it loosely on before wandering out onto the balcony.

He leans against the railing and tilts his face to the breeze, enjoying the scent of the sea air and the dull, fruity smell of the trees. Behind him, he can hear Hermann shuffling out of bed and pulling on the other robe. He comes out to join Newt on the balcony, squinting at the sun as though it has offended him by shining.

“I wish I’d brought a guitar,” says Newt. “I could’ve played something for you.”

“I would’ve liked that,” Hermann says softly. “You’re very talented, you know.”

“Shut up. You’re just saying that because I put out.”

“Don’t be crass. You _are_ talented, and a good academic too, even if some of your theories are a little . . .”

“Batshit?”

“I was going to say eccentric, but yes.”

There’s a comfortable silence between them, just for a moment. They watch the trees swaying noisily in the wind. Their last day of peace, before they send Raleigh and Mako into the sea. One last day, before the storm.

“After we began corresponding,” Hermann says slowly, “I made it my business to read everything you’d ever published. It was enlightening, to say the least. You’re very articulate on paper.”

“Guess the real me was a bit of a disappointment, huh,” says Newt. He tries to play it off with a laugh, but it comes out as an awkward chuckle.

“Yes,” says Hermann placidly. “And no.”

He bumps Newt’s ankle with the rubber tip of his cane- _budge up, just a bit-_ and Newt moves to the side to make room for Hermann at the railing. He does it silently. For once, he can’t see any point in saying anything.

“The real you was rather more than what you put on paper,” Hermann muses. “More than I expected. More than I was ready for.”

“Aw, Herm,” says Newt sweetly, gearing up to interrupt, but Hermann gives him a stern look that shuts him down at once.

“Listen to me,” says Hermann. “I am attempting to explain myself.”

“Sure,” Newt blinks. “Sure, sure.”

“You have to understand, there was nothing of myself that I was unable to put in a letter. I consider myself a collection of memories and data. I am the sum of my parts. You on the other hand,” and here, just for a moment, Hermann’s voice falters. “You . . . you were quite thoroughly inconsistent, and there were things you hadn’t told me, when I had told you everything. Furthermore, you did whatever you pleased. Even when you knew it would hurt you. Sometimes especially then.”

He looks down at his hands, and swallows. He wrings them together like he’s trying to knot something in his hands. “I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around that,” Hermann says finally. “I couldn’t fathom a man who was more than the sum of his parts.”

Newt smiles, his heart full to bursting. “And you say you hate poets.”

“I hate poetry, Newton,” Hermann says sharply. “Not poets. Poets are merely scientists looking in the wrong place.”

Newt laughs. He ducks his head to run a hand through his hair; it’s getting much too scruffy these days, and it’s starting to bleach from the sun. He’s been on this island too long. “I saved your letters,” he says. “All of them. I used to, uh. I used to run my fingertips along the creases.”

“Now you’re just being soppy.”

“I’m not, Hermann. I swear, I did,” Newt says, and he wants it to come out as teasing but it sounds terribly sincere when it leaves his mouth. “I read them over and over again, for _years_ , dude. Because . . . Look, I know you thought you were holding it back, but I could _tell_ that you were just a weird 90’s kid like me, full of all this, all this,” he gestures angrily with his hands, trying to give shape to the feeling he’s trying to evoke, “all this pent-up nerd energy just waiting for an outlet, right? And you told me so much stuff about your life, and sometimes I wanted to just, I wanted to break something or kick a wall or something, thinking about you stuck in Germany dealing with all that crap. But you didn’t bad mouth anyone, not even your dad. You thought the best of him, and everyone, all the time, and like . . . I’d stay up late reading your emails and thinking, wow, this guy is a freaky, lonely kid like me, only he’s twice as smart and he actually has a future. And then I _met_ you, dude. And all that weird shit, all that . . . all that stuff you told me about, all the things that, I mean we were intimate, weren’t we? We told each other things. And then I met you and it was like all that intimacy and all the _it’s easy to talk to you_ stuff just didn’t exist anymore.”

Hermann is staring at him with a look of naked astonishment. “Newton,” he says, and Newt kisses him.

“You still piss me off though,” Newt breathes into Hermann’s mouth when he’s through. “Like, every day, really? You’re like every shitty professor I ever I had who told me I didn’t have the _right image_ for academia, and like-”

Hermann slips his tongue into Newt’s mouth and Newt chokes off into silence, overwhelmed by the feeling of Hermann’s hands tight on his forearms, and his tongue, his _tongue,_ licking into Newt’s mouth and making him weak at the knees.

“Fuck, man,” Newt murmurs, dazed, when Hermann moves to start brushing his cheeks with kisses instead. “Can you just like, do _that_ whenever I start rambling? You know what, dude, can you do that right in front of Hannibal Chau?”

“I will _not,”_ says Hermann, but he sounds amused, not offended, and the comment does prompt him to move his hands into Newt’s hair and kiss him harder.

Newt, delighted, counts that as a _maybe_.


	9. You're Gonna Carry That Weight

Newt watches from the roof of the hotel as the Jaeger- _their_ Jaeger- rises from beyond the trees. Black and gray and ten stories high, blindingly reflective in the early morning sun. Newt’s eyes, hidden behind blue-tinted sunglasses, still have to squint against the brightness.

Space Cowboy moves almost lazily, like a reluctant officer standing at attention. Romeo Blue was slow too, slower, even, thanks to its superior height and weight. The “angel wing” fins still project from her back, sharp and streamlined, and the Conn-Pod is still too small in proportion to the torso. The vents along her hull are sealed up tight. She lacks the burning, open-air heart of Gipsy Danger, but Newt knows that behind her metal ribs, the Plutonic Furnace is working double-time to keep her walking.

She’s standing now, and her crested head is the highest point on the island. Newt watches her take her first step, with the familiar Gipsy Danger swagger that means Raleigh and Mako are piloting, and all around him Beach LOCCENT erupts in claps and hollers.

“Beach LOCCENT" isn’t even on the beach. Tendo had moved up to the roof of Hannibal’s hotel, citing it as the best vantage point with the best reception, and the rest had followed. Hannibal had a number of his aides set up a heavy canopy, giving Tendo enough shade to hook up his laptop to Hermann’s holograph projectors and get a good display going. The projection looks rough and undefined against a backdrop of the ocean horizon, but the information is there. As Space Cowboy begins to walk with slow, thunderous steps around the perimeter of the island, Newt and Hermann crowd over Tendo’s shoulder to get a look at what they’re dealing with. Behind them, Hannibal leans against the railing and bites into a mango, chewing it thoughtfully as the Jaeger begins to approach.

The sea beacon signal still wavers, but it holds. Tendo flicks his wrist to bring up a circular map at the bottom of the projection, pinpointing the location of Space Cowboy relative to her targets, Hohenheim and Greaser. They’re far from the island, going by boat. Not far for a Jaeger. The rest of Tendo’s screens- he’s got his laptop, the holograph, _and_ Newt’s tablet all hooked up- are a constant stream of Space Cowboy’s functional stats. Newt is not a J-tech man, but Hermann can take in information, process it, and produce a meaningful output faster than Newt’s synapses could ever hope to snap. Right now he’s got his hand on the back of Tendo’s chair, leaning on it as he peers over his shoulder, his brow furrowed. “She’ll have difficulty with the water pressure if she’s down there for too long.”

“Mako ran over the blueprints with us,” Newt says quickly. “She said the water pressure won’t be an issue.”

“Not at first, no. But I doubt the Jaeger’s structural integrity should it remain in the water for longer than is necessary,” says Hermann. His voice is as dry and pedantic as chalk. Like his friends aren’t _in_ that Jaeger. Newt, meanwhile, can think about nothing else.

Space Cowboy has drawn closer now, covering massive amounts of ground in a handful of steps. Newt wonders what it must be like to drift with her; a near-perfect vessel of human ingenuity, with no memories or emotions to muddy the drift. Pure synchronicity between pilots, in a left hemisphere / right hemisphere information relay. The sense of power must be indescribable. Newt wonders how pilots don’t get drunk on the feeling.

He never used to want this. He didn’t have the same fascination with Jaegers that most people had. Yet after the drift, Newt desire to pilot a Jaeger grew exponentially, along with bitterness mixed with reluctant understanding. The Academy did not accept Rangers with physical limitations, and Hermann had lived with that knowledge for decades.

“Neural handshake, strong and holding,” says Tendo, adjusting his headset. “How does it feel in there, kids? Your drift connection seems stable on our end, and your equilibrium? Phew, top-notch.”

He ups the volume on their broadcasting signal, enough to hear it over the sound of the waves and Space Cowboy’s approaching footsteps. Mako’s voice comes in clear, but muted, as though from behind a wall. _“Drift connection stable, Mr. Choi.”_

Hermann ducks his head, and only Newt catches his quiet sigh of relief. Newt wants to squeeze his shoulder, but Hermann might not take kindly to that around Tendo and Hannibal, so he settles for an encouraging nod just as the roof is eclipsed in the Jaeger’s shadow.

The sound is incredible from this close a vantage point. As one foot leaves the shore and steps into the water, the displaced sand rushes back in to fill the trench. Newt watches in awe, squinting against the sunlight singing off the reflective metal. It’s her peculiar delicacy that amazes him the most, watching her wade deeper with a kind of gentle caution despite her enormous size. That’s not all Raleigh and Mako, he knows. That’s the effectiveness of the drift combined with state-of-the-art J-tech programming. She moves with the easy strength of a Mark I and the grace of a Mark IV.

“Space Cowboy, lookin’ good on our end,” said Tendo, one hand on his laptop and the other busy rearticulating the sonar chart of their corner of the Pacific. “ETA twenty minutes till Greaser engagement point. Verbal check-in, copy?”

_“Raleigh Becket, copy.”_

_“Mako Mori, copy.”_

“Alright, Space Cowboy, you are cleared for descent in T minus ten. Nine. Eight . . .”

The Jaeger is far from shore now, deep in the water after only a few steps. Newt lets out an uncertain breath. Jaegers are built for underwater combat, and designed specifically to combat water-dwelling threats, but Newt doesn’t envy Raleigh and Mako the experience of being latched into a Conn-pod underwater. Unable to free themselves from the restraints of their suits. Unable to break their connection should the drift become too overwhelming for them.

There were no escape pods in Space Cowboy. Hannibal’s goons hadn’t salvaged them. Newt had met only one team of pilots who worked without escape pods, and the Kaidonovskys took pride in that. They won, or they died.

Three guesses how that ended up.

The countdown reaches one and Mako and Raleigh submerge themselves entirely. Newt can see the vast shadow of their Jaeger in the water as she moves out towards the horizon, where her quarry is waiting for it. “Holy shit,” mumbles Hannibal through a mouthful of mango. “There she goes.”

They watch Space Cowboy’s icon blink steadily on Tendo’s screen, next to a readout of vital statistics; water pressure, oxygen levels, neural handshake, and so on. A hundred little details to keep track of. A hundred ways for pilots to die.

“Don’t look so worried, brother,” Tendo says drily, giving Newt a knowing look. “Just sit back and let me do my job.”

Newt claps Tendo on the shoulder and hopes his smile doesn’t look too forced. “Sorry, man. I’m getting in your way. Nothing to do but wait it out, right?”

“Right.”

“Right.”

Somehow, he doesn’t feel comforted.

 

_“We are not calling it Beach LOCCENT,” Hermann had said, in the early hours of the morning. His hands found their way into the space between their bodies, and began to do up the last few buttons of Newt’s shirt with a degree of care that was not due him._

_Newt watched him with eyes still sore from sleep and tried not to kiss him. “I think it’s a great name,” he murmured instead. “Definitely. We should go all out. Beach episode. Swimsuits and panty shots.”_

_Hermann’s hands stilled on Newt’s buttons, then moved upwards to cup his cheek. “Need I remind you that should Ms. Mori and Mr. Becket fail-”_

_“No,” Newt whispered. “You don’t need to remind me.”_

_He let Hermann finish with his buttons before putting on his sunglasses and giving himself a sly smirk in the mirror. The blue lenses made him look wealthy and arrogant; he kind of adored them. He looped his belt into his pinstriped jeans and turned around as he buckled it, regarding Hermann with a look that he hoped came across as confident and sexy. “You know, after we save the world again, I want you to come touring with me.”_

_Hermann gave Newt a curious look as he began rolling up his sleeves. Newt tried not to look at his arms, adorably lopsided; one of them slightly more muscular, and the other slender and bird-boned. “If you’re asking me to join you on the lecture circuit, you know full well why I can’t do that.”_

_Newt scowled, looking back at the mirror. “I swear to fuck, dude, I am so tired of watching you bow and scrape to that one-eyed bitch.”_

_He caught a glimpse of Hermann rolling his eyes in the mirror. “Newton.”_

_“Just ask him,” Newt insisted, adjusting his shirt collar. “Just ask him for a few months off to give some lectures. We should write a paper, Herm. We haven’t written a paper together in like years.”_

_Hermann rested both hands on the grip of his cane and caught out Newt’s eyes in the mirror. “I have responsibilities to him, Newton. More than you do. Now that you know why I took the job in the first place, I would like to think you’d be supportive, instead of throwing a tantrum in an effort to get your own way.”_

_“I don’t like this, dude. I don’t like the leash he’s got us on.”_

_“Then tell him that to his face,” said Hermann._

_He said it like he knew Newt wouldn’t._

_“Hey, fuck you too, buddy,” Newt mumbled, and he turned away from the mirror._

 

Newt had been stationed in the Lima Shatterdome when Ceptid attacked.

He had worked in a hot, claustrophobic basement laboratory. The air was so hot that Newt’s glasses had fogged with steam whenever he ventured upstairs, and the ugly metal walls sizzled with heat upon contact with his skin. He remembers pacing back and forth in the lab with his shirt off, ranting about structural irregularities in kaiju DNA. Hermann did not look up from his calculations, but he later complained to HR, to no effect.

Guayaquil had been hit the next day.

Three Jaegers were deployed to take the kaiju down. Three on one, a no-brainer, until Ceptid dragged itself feebly into the center of the the city and ran itself through with a skyscraper. The resulting kaiju blue killed twenty thousand civilians and injured fifteen thousand more. Only minutes after Matador Fury re-docked at the Shatterdome, Daniel Riviera had slammed Newt against the wall hard enough to make his head spin and demanded to know why K-Sci, for all their fancy doctorates, couldn’t have told them to anticipate a kamikaze attack.

That was the first inkling he’d had that the kaiju had a goal beyond self-preservation, and that they might have motivation beyond a basic attraction to light, heat, and pollution. Back then, Newt had no thought of drifting with a kaiju. He had only just perfected a device to safely extract chemical samples from kaiju glands, and hadn’t even patented it yet. The thought that each kaiju might be uniquely designed to fulfill a function had never even entered his head. More fool he.

Ceptid was a kamikaze. Leatherback had been designed to emit an electromagnetic pulse, disabling the primary digital functions of Jaegers. But there’s no way to predict what function Greaser and Hohenheim could have been made to fulfill, and that’s a reality Newt would rather not face.

The fact is, kaiju do not sleep.

They do not lie quietly at the bottom of the ocean and wait for Jaegers to come to them.

Newt picks at one of his leather bracelets, his mind a world away as he leans against the railing and looks out into the empty sky. He’s only dimly aware that he hasn’t spoken for a long time. Behind him, he can hear the click-thump click-thump of Hermann pacing back and forth in agitation. Then he hears him pause to angrily knock his cane against one of the deck chairs Hannibal’s aides had failed to remove. “This shouldn’t be here,” he says angrily, to no one in particular. “We are not on _holiday._ ”

“Relax, Gottlieb,” Hannibal says lazily, flicking the mango pit off the roof. “Stacker’s kid eats kaiju for breakfast. They’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” Newt says vaguely, shoving his hands into his pockets so he can ball them into fists without anyone noticing. He thinks of Raleigh and Mako, enduring the weight of the ocean over their heads. “Relax, Herm.”

“For God’s sake, Newton,” Hermann says bitterly. “I am not made of glass.”

“How many Jaegers have you seen deployed, doc?” says Hannibal. “This ain’t anything different.”

“It _is_ different,” Hermann insists. There’s an edge to his voice. “This is not a kaiju attack. This is, if anything, a Jaeger attack. We have no way of predicting how Greaser and Hohenheim will respond,” He glares at Newt, as if to say, _back me up on this_.

Newt opens his mouth to agree with him for once, but before he can, his stomach drops and he feels like he’s going to throw up. He droops against the railing, his hands gripping tight for balance as a hot, anxious tremor in his lower stomach threatens to make him keel over. It feels like every chemical in his body has been flushed into his system at once; he wants to run and run and run and _fuck_ now he’s tasting blood, when did his nose start bleeding?

“Guys,” says Tendo, straightening in his chair and looking sharply at their tracking map. He doesn’t appear to have noticed Newt’s sudden near-collapse. “Space Cowboy is currently approaching our first target. Greaser’s on the move.”

“Holy shit,” Newt stammers, tilting his head back and holding his nose to stop the flow of blood. “Greaser is panicking, Greaser is _scared_ , holy fuck, I’m, I’m-” A nervous, panicky laugh threatens to choke him, and he realizes the residual drift connection between him and the hive mind is strong. Stronger than he ever dared realize.

He can almost feel the water touching his skin, deep and black and cold.

There’s a too-big hand on his shoulder, steadying him, and when Newt is clearheaded enough to look up he realizes it’s Hannibal, and that his other hand is gripping Hermann’s elbow to keep him from falling over. Hermann’s nose is bleeding too, and he’s got the back of his hand pressed against it, but it does nothing to stop the blood. He shakes Hannibal’s hand off and sits down too hard on one of the deck chairs, his cane clattering to the ground next to him. He blinks like he’s having trouble keeping the world in focus. Newt feels a spike of panic, on top of everything. _No no no, not you too._

“LOCCENT to Space Cowboy,” Tendo says calmly, adjusting his headset. “Mori and Becket, how are we looking down there?”

There’s a momentary crackle from the line before Raleigh speaks. _“We have a visual on Greaser! Looks like he’s- ah- looks like he’s about 140 feet, he looks-”_ Raleigh’s voice crackles and fades for a moment, then picks up again. _“-bones exposed to the, to the seawater, and the antlers look almost veined, like they’re not quite bone?”_

“Its body is wrong,” Newt mutters frantically, abandoning his attempt to stifle the blood flow. It drips freely down into his mouth as Hannibal shakes his shoulder roughly, trying to keep him focused in the here and now. “Its body is wrong and its brain is wrong. The Precursors didn’t finish it. It’s broken and in pain and it thought that if it slept, it would heal, because . . . because that’s how all the other kaiju were created,” His face feels tight. He realizes that he’s smiling. No. Baring his teeth. “God, is it hot out here? It feels really hot out here.”

“He’s coming at you starboard side, be ready,” says Tendo. The Greaser icon moves across the screen- a marker, and no more. “Once you engage there’s nothing we can do to help, we’re blind up here.”

_“Copy that.”_

_“Copy,”_ says Mako. _“Engaging target.”_

Newt knows the exact moment Space Cowboy makes a run at Greaser because it’s the moment that the sudden riot of chemical-induced emotion in his brain subsides into a cold, dark feeling of dread. Tendo is talking into his headset, but Newt doesn’t hear him. He wonders if he’s about to experience drift death; the loss of a partner with whom one has stared a connection.

The rational part of his mind is screaming at him to sit down, to reorder his thoughts. Separate Newton Geiszler from the hive mind. _Don’t think about the ocean. Don’t think about the kaiju and the monster, don’t think about the monster and the Jaeger. Think about Hermann._

But thinking about Hermann doesn’t help, because at the moment, Hermann’s got his head between his knees and his hands laced behind his head, looking like he’s about to throw up. Newt scrambles across the rooftop and squats on the ground next to him. “Don’t throw up, dude,” he says firmly. “When they’re dead, they, they won’t bother us anymore. We won’t have them in our heads ever again, alright, that’s my, that’s my promise."

Newt knows that Greaser’s lost an antler before Tendo says it. A sharp phantom pain, not unlike the ache he gets in his leg sometimes when Hermann is having a bad day, flares up in the back of his skull before subsiding into a dull throb. Next to him, Hermann’s breathing is growing steadier; the emotional spike is beginning to fade with the kaiju’s shock. Newt listens to Tendo talking, then Tendo _shouting,_ without really registering what he’s saying. All he can think about is the crushing weight of miles and miles of water, and their cobbled-together Jaeger without escape pods.

Tendo’s screens start flashing red and green in quick succession. “The fuck does that mean?” Hannibal snarls, leaning over Tendo’s shoulder.

“Right leg has sustained heavy structural damage, sir,” says Tendo, his voice infuriatingly calm despite its raised volume. “The _crocus ultima_ remains undamaged- Becket? _Raleigh?”_

They hear Raleigh shouting on the other end of the line, and Newt’s vision swims in front of him. He’s lying down- how did that happen? He’s on his back and Hermann’s hand is on his shoulder. There’s blood dripping from Newt’s nose into the back of his throat. It feels a little bit like drowning. “Drift death,” he mumbles, gripping Hermann’s wrist. “Drift- fuck, dude, I- is this drift death? Are we gonna feel drift death right now?”

“Impossible,” says Hermann shakily. “We- we didn’t feel it when Raiju perished, or Scunner. The death of a kaiju is not the death of the hive mind, Newton. For goodness sakes, be _sensible._ ”

“You’re right,” Newt gasps, closing his eyes, just for a moment. “You’re right dude, just fucking . . . I’m such a dumbass.”

“Completely.”

“Just an absolute . . . dumb . . . fuck . . .”

“Newton,” Hermann says sharply, shaking Newt awake. “Get back here this instant.”

Tendo chair goes skittering across the roof as he leaps to his feet. “Greaser’s signature is out,” he says, cranking the broadcasting signal up to maximum. “No vital signs. Space Cowboy, do you copy?”

There’s a crackle from the other end, and then Mako’s voice pulls through. _“Copy- . . . -in to unhinge the jaw and- . . . -major structural damage to the legs and lower torso- . . . -significant kaiju blue contamination, repeat, kaiju blue- . . .”_

“Get back here,” Tendo demands. _“Right_ now.”

“Hang on!” Hannibal says roughly, and before Tendo can protest he’s tugged off Tendo’s headset and put the mic up to his mouth. “Both of you, listen to me. I want you to bring in the body. Drag it up onto the shore, I want my scalpers to have the first crack at the remains.”

“Sir-” Tendo protests.

Hannibal silences him with a look, and returns his attention to the screen. “You fuckin’ got that, you two?”

Radio silence for a moment, before Mako’s voice comes back. _“Yes, sir.”_

“Good,” says Hannibal. He drops the headset in Tendo’s lap, and steps over Newt’s body on his way to the stairs leading down from the roof.

 

It’s a miracle they make it to the beach.

Space Cowboy crawls, rather than strides, with a terrible crunching sound as she drags her twisted metal across the sand. Her legs and lower torso are torn to mangled shreds. Newt can see the violet glow of the Plutonic Engine, still burning, through the holes in her metal skeleton. In her left hand, she’s dragging the equally mangled body of Greaser. One antler has been torn off and the jaw is unhinged, dangling like a piece of a broken puppet. Its lower jaw alone is the size of the entire hotel dining room.

Innumerable lacerations and fractures spiderweb across the creature’s grayish body. The skin has sloughed off in numerous places, revealing open bone and wet, wobbling sacks of organs. The trail of kaiju blue it leaves behind it extends to the horizon.

Newt thinks of the polluted clam shells on the beach, and wants to vomit. He stays on the rooftop while Tendo and Hannibal run down, his face in his hands, his shoulders hunched. He wants to shrink into himself and die. He wants to reach into his own skull and squeeze his brain to death between his hands.

He does not want to think about the months they’ve spent on this island, all the time and money poured into a Jaeger that tore like wet tissue paper on its first trip out.

He does not want to think about Hohenheim.

Hermann’s hand settles on Newt’s shoulder. “Herm,” Newt says, his voice shaking. “I, I am going to throw myself right off this building, dude. Right the fuck off.”

“You don’t mean that,” Hermann says sharply, squeezing Newt’s shoulder.

“You’re right, I don’t,” says Newt. He drops his hands and stares bleakly at the ground. Thank fucking God Hermann’s connection with the hive mind isn’t as strong. Newt drifted with them twice, after all. The first time nearly killed him.

The second would’ve.

Should’ve.

“No,” Newt snarls, thumping himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand. “No, no, _no,_ fuck that, fuck all that, _fuck everything!”_

This last he screams, and his voice echoes across the beach. Far below them they can see Tendo and Hannibal, mouse-like in size, as they approach the cooling head of Space Cowboy across the sand. Two tiny figures are scrambling out of one of the entry hatches, seemingly unharmed, but even this isn’t enough to lessen Newt’s frustration.

“Newton . . .” says Hermann cautiously. “Something has to be done.”

 

“Not happening!” Newt is still insisting hours later, eyes screwed shut against the shower spray as he rinses shampoo out of his hair. “Abso-fucking-lutely not!”

“You have to at least consider it!” Hermann yells from the other side of the bathroom door. “Our residual drift connection to the kaijus has only been growing stronger, stronger even than _our_ drift connection. You almost had a _seizure_ today, Newton, if we don’t at least consult a neurologist there may be an increased risk of-”

“I’m aware of the risks, dude!” Newt rips back the shower curtain and grabs the nearest towel, still damp from Hermann’s shower. He towels himself off mostly ineffectively, and drags his robe off the hook on the wall. “I’m aware of the risks, seriously. I was aware of them before I drifted in the first place, and, and if anything it’s _you_ who was uninformed when you drifted with _me_.”

“There are neurologists who specialize in the drift’s effects on the human brain, Newton. I know you know that. If you would at least _consider_ it.”

Newt yanks open the bathroom door a little too hard and storms out. Hermann is sprawled in a chair by the bed, one leg up on the ottoman and one arm dangling off the side of the armrest, crinkling and un-crinkling a half empty bottle of water. He’s leaning with his head on his other hand, exhausted. The posture is so positively Newt-like that Newt feels a warm rush of affection, quickly chased by frustration at Hermann’s unwillingness to _understand_.

“We can’t do that,” says Newt shortly. “Neither of us. We’re the only human beings on the planet who’ve drifted with a kaiju, Herm, and our brains are the subject of scientific interest. First they’ll scan us for irregularities, then they’ll start running us through tests, experiments, and before long we’re signing off our autonomy and consenting to whatever fucking _procedures_ they want to subject us to.”

Hermann narrows his eyes at Newt. “You’re a paranoid fool, Newton.”

“Am I?” Newt says, with increasing shrillness. “Am I, Herm? Don’t you get it?” He drops himself on the edge of the bed so hard he bounces on the mattress. “Our brains are, are worth a lot of money in the wrong hands, Herm. We’re just lucky that Hannibal doesn’t give a shit what we’ve drifted with, as long as we’re making him money.”

“So we’re meant to . . . what? Endure it?” Hermann hisses, leaning forward and prodding a finger at Newt’s chest. “The nightmares? The fits? The dissonance between your mind and my own, while the hive mind seems to grow stronger every day?”

“Don’t you _get it?”_ Newt says angrily, gesturing with his arms. “They’ll _separate_ us, dude! They’ll dig up another kaiju brain and make me drift with it till my brain’s all shot to hell! They’ll _ruin_ me!”

“As if I’d let that happen,” says Hermann fiercely. He waves his hands as though shaking Newt off, and sinks back into his chair. “I’m not afraid of this mysterious, undefinable _They_ , Newton. I will not tolerate you having such a violent reaction again when we engage Hohenheim.”

“When we engage Hohenheim,” Newt parrots in a mocking voice. “Engage? Engage how, exactly? We have no _Jaeger_. Greaser _fucked up our Jaeger._ Our Jaeger which is currently lying on the beach with a dead kaiju that’s going to poison this whole damn island if Hannibal’s scalpers don’t disarticulate it fast enough.”

“We will think of something,” Hermann mutters, pressing his knuckles against his forehead, his eyes shut tight. “Until then, getting your head checked seems to be the only action I’m capable of taking.”

“You don’t get any say in whether or not I get my head checked.”

“Then what _do_ I get a say in, Newton?” Hermann says angrily. He slaps the arm of his chair with his palm. “I am your  _partner.”_

“Yes, okay, yes, I know, dude, but I am my own man, you know that.”

“How come when it’s about your life, you’re your own man, but when it’s about mine, we’re in a partnership?” Hermann demands. He leans forward with his hands folded, looking like he’s won a game of chess Newt didn’t know he was playing. “Perhaps I’d like to go on the lecture circuit, hmm?”

“This is not about the lecture circuit-”

“Let me finish! Perhaps I’d like to go on the lecture circuit, and leave _you_ in Hong Kong to deal with Hannibal Chau. But no, I can’t do that, because you can’t bear the thought of me being too busy to attend to your every little desire.”

Newt stares, dumbstruck. Hermann lets out a sharp little exhale through his nose and leans back in his chair, his hand returning to his forehead. “Never mind that you swan off for months at a time,” he mutters. “And here I am, meant to be satisfied with a few emails and lonely late-night phone calls. And I am satisfied with you, I am. I know that your lectures are very important to you, but your health is particularly important to me, so . . . so while I don’t ask you to concede to me in many things, I’ll ask that you concede to me in this.”

Newt looks at the ground for a long moment, rubbing his hands together, and doesn’t say anything. He knows how this story goes. It begins with Hermann holding his hand in a waiting room, and it ends with a brain in a jar labelled _Geiszler_.

He closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at Hermann. “Can we talk about this later?” he says bleakly. “. . . You’re right, Herm. _Schatzi._ I know you’re right. But can we just . . . talk about it, later, okay?”

Hermann doesn’t respond. Then a stiff, “Fine.”

Without really thinking about it, Newt starts worrying the pinky ring on his left hand. “I’m freakin’ out a little, man,” he says, very quietly. “What are we gonna do?”

“I don’t know, Newton.”

“Is she still functional?”

“Upwards of forty percent of her essential systems are still operative, and a great deal of the metal itself has been damaged,” Hermann smiles at him sadly. “It could take years to bring her back up to standard again, with the materials we have. That’s what Tendo said, at any rate.”

“God,” Newt sighs. He closes his eyes and wishes he could fade out of existence entirely. “What about the PONS?”

At that, Hermann’s eyes seem to brighten, and a little of the sadness is gone from his smile. “The PONS unit is fine. No structural damage, and Ms. Mori and Mr. Becket carried the drift perfectly.”

“At least there’s that,” says Newt. He gives his head a little shake. “At least . . . there’s that.”

The urge to drift with Hermann again is almost overwhelming in its intensity. It hangs in the air between them, and Newt knows Hermann feels it too.

“We need to drift again,” Hermann murmurs, finally.

“Yes, _God,_ yes.”

“There hasn’t been . . . _harmony_ . . . between our minds in some time. I would like to simply know what’s going through your head, rather than being forced to parse it out.”

“It’s a chore,” Newt says with a rueful grin. “I’m a lot, I know. Trying to have a conversation with me is like, is like nails on a chalkboard, right.”

“That’s not what I meant,” says Hermann. He pushes himself to his feet with his cane and crosses the short distance between them. The mattress dips under Newt’s side as he sits down. “You know that’s not what I meant. Time was, you’d know precisely what I meant no matter how poorly I said it.”

“That’d be nice. Take down all that weirdness between us and just like, just get _in_ it. Not have to say anything, just know,” Newt sighs, and rubs his hands up and down his thighs as though trying to warm them.

“Unfortunately, I supposed that’s too much to- oh, hmm,” says Hermann, his voice trailing off into a confused hum.

Newt feels Hermann’s hand in his hair and stills, but it’s there for only a moment before he feels a sharp tweak of pain and Hermann’s hand draws back. “Ow, dude!” he whines, ducking his head. “What the hell man, that’s my _hair.”_

Hermann’s got one hand in front of his mouth, and Newt can tell by the crinkling around his eyes that he’s holding back a laugh. “Dear,” he says, voice trembling with repressed mirth. “Newton, dear.”

He holds out the hair for Newt’s inspection and Newt nearly falls out of bed. Instead he flops onto his back and grabs the nearest pillow, jamming it over his face. “Just what I _fucking need!_ ” he yells, his voice muffled in the fabric. “Great! Just great!”

“I _knew_ you would go gray first,” Hermann says, with unabashed delight. He gives Newt’s leg a gentle shove. “I was right, just as I am _always_ right.”

“I’m gonna dye my hair.”

“I absolutely forbid it.”

“Fine,” mumbles Newt. “I’ll concede to you on _that._ ”

They look at each other across the narrowing divide between them, Newt sprawled out on the bed, and Hermann sitting on the end of it. At Newt’s silent gesture, Hermann moves to lie down too, favoring his good side as he gets comfortable next to Newt.

Newt shifts onto his side too, so they’re facing each other. “Hello.”

Hermann smiles warmly at him. “Hello.”

Newt reaches out, touches his fingertips to Hermann’s collarbone. He traces its curves, the sharp dip into the hollow of his throat. He’s not exactly sure why he’s doing it, but it feels unimaginably comforting.

“You know I love you more than anything else in the whole wide world, right?” he says weakly.

“Yes,” says Hermann. “I do.”

“Even when I’m angry at you.”

“Yes. Even then, I know.”

Newt’s fingertips linger at Hermann’s throat. “And . . . I know, I do, but . . . tell me again. That you love me.”

“I love you,” says Hermann gently. He reaches up to grip Newt’s wrist, rub his thumb over the pulse point. “I’ve loved you for seventeen years now. You’re not going to scare me away.”

“What if I became, like, an eighty-year-old mad scientist. With gray hair. Would you love me then?”

“I will. _When_ you become that scientist,” says Hermann, which makes Newt’s heart jump into his throat. “Don’t forget that by then I too will be an eighty-year-old mad scientist. With gray hair. And I’ll love you just the same.”

Newt smiles weakly. “Fuck, man, c’mere.”

Hermann obliges, and lets Newt get his arms around him and press him close against his chest. Newt tucks Hermann’s face against his neck so he won’t see Newt’s blinking back tears. “. . . You know dude, sometimes . . . and I know this is really stupid, given the whole _‘we saved the world’_ thing, but . . . sometimes I wish we hadn’t drifted with the hive mind at all. That it had been just us. Just the good things.”

“It would never have happened like that,” Hermann says. He sounds almost apologetic. “I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have dared share the inside of my brain, if I didn’t think it was absolutely essential to the survival of humanity. And you,” he adds, more quietly. “And your survival.”

“I didn’t care about my survival, dude.”

“I know. But you should.”

“I almost _wanted_ to do it again. I was excited,” Newt murmurs, almost to himself. He strokes the back of Hermann’s neck with his thumb. “Two human/kaiju drifts in a forty-eight hour period, I was, I just, I was so high on the thought of it. On the thought of . . . going out like that. Like a fucking rockstar, dude. Doing something no one else in the world had ever-”

He stops talking.

His eyes open wide, and his heart stutters in his chest. He has an idea.

“Herm,” he whispers. “Holy shit. Have you talked to Hannibal at all since Raleigh and Mako came back in?”

“Yes,” Hermann says slowly, pulling away enough to look Newt in the eye. “Why?”

Newt grips him on both sides of his head and presses a firm kiss to his forehead. “Dude. _Baby._ I have an idea.”


	10. Kaiju Dead, Details Later

The drive across the island is cold and peaceful. Hermann can smell the potent, fruity scent of the trees.

He glances over at Newt, asleep in the seat next to him. He’s curled up around himself, his feet on the dash and his arms folded tight. His hair is unforgivably messy, and his gray pinstriped button-up is stained with engine grease all down the front.

It’s sweet, really.

It reminds Hermann of clocking into the lab and finding Newt passed out at his desk, dead to the world until Hermann swatted his ankle with his cane and told him to look lively. That was a common occurrence in those days, when the war was just beginning and nights weren’t easy. Newt’s circadian rhythm was fucked up beyond all reason, and Hermann would regularly be shocked out of sleep at odd hours of the morning by Newt pounding on the door. _Hermann, I could clone a kaiju. I could do it. Hermann, you’ll never believe what I found when I sequenced the DNA._

Cloning a kaiju had been Newt’s maddest idea by far. Thank God, or rather, thank Hermann, that it hadn’t gone anywhere. Not like the thought of drifting with a kaiju.

Not like Experiment B.

Nothing, _nothing_ came close to Experiment B in terms of scale and utter foolhardiness.

Newt had barely finished explaining the idea over the breakfast table before Mako was steering Hermann away from Tendo and Hannibal. She asked him if Newt could really do it.

“Yes,” he’d said, without hesitation.

His word, as ever, was good enough for Mako.

Experiment B has Newt up to his elbows in kaiju blue while Mako tears out her hair over J-tech diagrams and treatises on Taiwanese biomechanical engineering. Despite Hermann’s doubts and reservations, even he is forced to concede that it is good to see Newt hurling himself so passionately into his work.

Sometimes he forgets how bright Newt’s ambition burns. Like a shooting star whose trajectory Hermann could never quite predict.

The last thing he needs is a distraction.

No.

The last thing he needs is a husband.

Hermann can’t help but dwell on it. Newt is too flighty, too eager to wander. His mother ran off to America with her lover only to run back again in search of fame, abandoning both lover and child. It was in her son’s nature to do the same, wasn’t it? And why shouldn’t he?

That was the Newt Geiszler Hermann fell in love with, after all. The one who holds a hand to his ear when he walks out in front of a crowded auditorium, pretending he can’t hear the applause.

Newt would say yes, if Hermann asked.

In time, he’d come to regret it, but Hermann would still be there. Holding him back.

Hermann’s joke of an almost-proposal had been interrupted months ago on Hannibal’s boat, and perhaps that’s for the best. Too many doubts have crept in between them. Too much dissonance, jealousy. Newt’s probably forgotten all about the incident on the boat. Every day, Hermann thinks to himself, _is this the day I ask him?_ And every day he makes some new and cowardly excuse not to.

He loves him so much he feels like he might shake apart under the pressure.

The jeep hits a particularly rocky divot in the road and Hermann winces, reaching down to rest his hand on Newt’s thigh. He feels Newt stir a little under his hand. “Sorry about that, dear,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean to wake you till we reached the hanger.”

“No, man. It’s fine,” Newt groans, stretching his arms up over his head. He yanks them back quickly when a branch slaps his hand. “I’m- _ow!_ I’m so ready for you to see the progress Mako and I have made. This is so far beyond anything we’ve done before.”

 _Ask him, ask him, ask him,_ Hermann thinks.

He doesn’t.

 

The shipping hanger reeks of ammonia.

The harsh, antiseptic lights seem almost out of place. The romantic in Hermann thinks it would be rather more appropriate for the lights to be flickering, or entirely out. Beneath the ammonia he can smell kaiju blue and static electricity. Newt snaps a pair of blue latex gloves against his wrists and leads Hermann forward into the shadow of Experiment B.

“Hannibal’s scalpers were able to harvest most of the flesh before it deteriorated,” Newt says, motioning for one of Hannibal’s aides to bring him his coat. He does it with the easy gesture of a man who’s ordered lab techs around all his life. “We’ve managed to preserve both the primary and secondary brains, completely intact. We couldn’t even do that with Otachi’s Baby, dude. We’ve got Greaser down to a brain twitching in a jar until we get the body up and running again.”

His blasé tone makes it sound like this isn’t the most revolutionary Jaegertech advancement since the creation of of Striker Eureka. Hermann mutters something in agreement and moves a little closer, still cautious despite Newt’s assurances that Greaser is quite incapable of movement. _(“Mostly_ dead!” he’d crowed, in a terrible Billy Crystal.)

Greaser’s body is almost too big for the hanger.

The remains have been crammed into the available space, and the arms are disarticulated into pieces. Its head rests on its right side, unmoving, with a single vast, wet eye staring vacantly in Hermann’s direction. The lower jaw has been removed entirely, and is even now being rendered down into marketable tissue samples elsewhere in the building. It has been replaced with a metal jaw the size of the hotel lobby, a piece that Hermann recognizes as one of Space Cowboy’s legs, repurposed. The new, metallic lower jaw has been wired tightly to the organic upper one, and there are scalper techs still working on reshaping the metal to better suite the contour of Greaser’s teeth.

“Kaiju are easy, dude,” Newt says quietly. Hermann turns around to see him rocking back and forth on his feet, his hands in the pockets of his blue-stained lab coat. He nods at Greaser’s unseeing eye. “They’re optimized for performance, just like a Jaeger. And thanks to the hive mind, one kaiju basically runs on the same software as another. If we could’ve shuffled around Karloff’s brain with Ceramander’s, wouldn’t have made any difference. They’re the samebeast.”

Hermann begins to circle the perimeter of the creature, and Newt jogs to catch up to him. They walk side by side as Hermann inspects Greaser’s prone form.

The torso is still gaped open, and raw with sloughed-off skin. Hermann can see the metal panels set aside to repair the damage, in an attempt to graft pure metal onto bone and silicon skin. Inside the cavern of Greaser’s chest, Hermann catches a glimpse of some sort of vital organ, tucked out of the way with steel netting. Scalpers are rappelling in and out of the chest cavity, and Hermann has to look away quickly before his stomach turns.

“Honestly, Newton,” he mutters. “How you can stand this bloody business is beyond me.”

Newt nudges him with his elbow. “You’re impressed though, yeah?”

Hermann looks over at him. Newt’s eyes are sparkling. “Yes. I am impressed.”

Newt whoops and punches the air. “You know it’s not so different from the semi-organic prosthetics they’re growing in Taiwan?” he says eagerly, lengthening his stride a little till he can start walking backwards in front of Hermann, stepping over bundles of cables without looking down. “Blending the organic tissue with the Jaegertech, I mean. Too much of Space Cowboy’s framework was damaged in the fight. There’s no _way_ we could dig up the resources to repair her. Not from Oblivion Bay, not from anywhere. But _this,_ ” he gestures widely at Greaser’s towering flank, “this we can work with. _A biomechanical Jaeger_. The first of its kind. The Jaegertech will augment the damaged kaiju, and the kaiju will provide a new framework with which to build a Jaeger. Equivalent exchange. It’s fucking _genius,_ dude. My best work, actually.”

Hermann is barely listening. They’ve reached Greaser’s legs, huge and stocky and knotted with muscle. Here there are almost no metal augmentations at all, though the lacerations in the creature’s skin extend all the way to its taloned feet. Some of the deeper ones have already been threaded shut with thick steel cables. The violet light of the Plutonic Furnace is stronger by far near the chest cavity, but all the way down by Greaser’s hamstrings, a faint purple glow is still visible through the sutures. It’s a hell of a spectacle.

“It’s . . . it’s remarkable, dear,” says Hermann, as they come around to the other side of the body. “It is absolutely remarkable.”

“Thanks, man,” says Newt, looking ready to levitate off the ground.

Greaser’s skin has bunched up into creases along its spine, like a roughly-handled book. Hermann can see clear plastic piping, or what he assumes is plastic, weaving in and out of the knots in the skin. They appear to connect to the spine itself, and, when Hermann looks closer, he sees that the piping is strung through with white, wet-looking strings of organic tissue. The mucous makes the clear plastic seem cloudy. It’s absolutely repulsive.

Hermann’s stares watches the floor as he and Newt circle their way back to the head. Newt bumps their shoulders together. “Hey.”

“I am not at all sure about this,” Hermann says, gesturing up at the vast, limp head of the creature. “I am not at _all_ sure.”

“It’ll be fine,” Newt says sharply. Hermann is disquieted to realize that Newt’s just as unsure himself. “We won’t even have to worry about the water pressure this time.”

“But you mean for us to _drift_ with this thing,” Hermann says weakly. “ _Us._ We are not Jaeger pilots, Newton. I am not a Jaeger pilot.”

“I know,” mutters Newt. He runs his hand through his hair and fists it tight for a second before letting go. “But it’s not as simple as, as hollowing out the kaiju and replacing it with Jaegertech, like some sort of fucked up hermit crab shell. Its body may be dead but the secondary and primary brains are still active, just like with Mutavore. We can’t drift with the Jaeger without drifting with the kaiju.”

Hermann hears the unspoken conclusion.

_We can’t ask anyone else to do that._

Hermann looks up at Greaser’s dog-like face. “I’m going up,” says Newt from somewhere behind him, and Hermann mutters, “Be careful,” before peering into the creature’s eye. The pupil, just the pupil, is the size of Hermann’s torso.

“. . . Don’t you think it’s cruel?” he says finally.

Newt has begun scaling the crested horns that run along the side of the creature’s face. He heaves himself up hand over hand, his boots scrambling on the gray flesh, as he pulls himself up to stand far, far above Hermann, on the swell of Greaser’s cheek. More of the clear plastic piping seems to grow like mold in the empty hinges of Greaser’s jaw, and Newt starts to check the elasticity of each one. Hermann wonders if that is where the Conn-pod is. Behind the half-metal teeth. Inside the kaiju’s mouth.

“You know what I think?” says Newt, and he has to raise his voice to be heard from all the way up there. There’s an edge to his voice. “I do think it’s cruel. Very cruel, actually. And I also think that these things killed my friends. So. Kind of a no-brainer.”

Hermann looks back at the lifeless eye, and wonders what it must be like to be a dead but still-twitching brain in an empty body. A body that will soon be half kaiju, and half the thing that killed it. It will be a miracle if they even get it to move.

When they drift with it.

The kaiju.

Hermann feels suddenly dizzy, and reaches out to steady himself against the nearest equipment cart. He can’t pilot a Jaeger. He’s can’t. They didn’t let him into the Academy, he _can’t,_ there’s no way.

 _Too frightened,_ he thinks furiously. _Admit it to yourself. You’re too frightened of drifting with a kaiju again._

Not just the kaiju.

Newt, too.

Hermann is not the same man he was when they drifted. He has four more years of development behind him. Four more years of thoughts and emotions and memories. Four years in which he’s shared more with Newt than he’d ever shared in the thirteen years prior. Newt would see every second of those years as Hermann understood them, the memories laid bare between them as though such a paltry thing as _separate skulls_ bore no meaning in the interlacing of their minds.

Furthermore, the drift would be just as dangerous, just as dizzying, as it had been the first time. Only now they wouldn’t do it with their feet on the ground.

Hermann is not a Jaeger pilot.

Sometimes, when he feels particularly burned out, he wonders how Newt might look at him if he were.

“Newton,” Hermann mumbles, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb. “Newton.”

“What’s that?” Newt shouts down. His voice echoes off the hanger’s metal walls.

“Newton, I- Get down from there at once,” Hermann snaps. “You’re going to slip.”

Newt waves his arms jerkily and mutters something unintelligible, but he does climb down, going backwards down the same horn-like protrusions he’d used to climb up. His boots skid a little near the bottom, and he awkwardly slides down the last few feet. He approaches Hermann with a smile bordering on anxious. “Hey, you good?”

“Newton,” says Hermann, “I cannot possibly pilot this thing.”

“You can,” says Newt quickly. His hand twitches like he’s going to touch Hermann’s arm, but a trio of technicians are wheeling an industrial centrifuge across the floor behind them, so he refrains. “Mako and I are rigging up the Conn-pod to accommodate us. _Us,_ Herm. You and me. We can’t ask Raleigh and Mako, they’re still banged up from the fight, and, and, and,” he gestures helplessly in the air, and lowers his voice even further. “You know what the kaiju drift did to us, _Schatzi._ We can’t ask them to do that.”

“I know,” Hermann snaps again. “I know we can’t.”

“We can do it,” says Newt. “We have to be able to do it. And it won’t be like last time either, we won’t be using scrap off Shaolin Rogue . . .”

His voice trails off. He looks up at the thing that used to be a kaiju like it’s his first time seeing it.

“Are you sure about this?” Hermann whispers, looking up at the thing that used to be a Jaeger.

“Yeah,” says Newt, a fraction too late.

They stand there in silent thought, listening to the distant sounds of sparking electricity and whirring drills.

“Well,” Hermann says in a tight little voice, drawing himself up to his full height. “I suppose there’s nothing else for it.”

Newt closes his eyes. Then he opens them again and looks at Hermann like he hung the moon in the sky.

“I really want to kiss you right now,” he says softly, making no move to do so.

Hermann looks at him. _If this works,_ he thinks, _I’ll kiss you in front of Hannibal Chau. I swear I will._

 

Sometimes Newt is so tired at the end of the day that he collapses into Hermann’s arms and doesn’t move till morning.

Other times he comes back to the hotel brimming with nervous energy, and gets his arms around Hermann before he’s even through the door. He presses the length of his body against Hermann’s like he’s trying to crawl inside him and live there, and on these occasions, Hermann locks the door behind them, and is very, very gentle with Newt until he falls asleep with his mouth still pressed against Hermann’s neck.

They name the creature Reanimator. A kaiju name, not a Jaeger one. Newt is utterly devoted to achieving the perfect marriage between synthetic Jaegertech and kaiju tissue, and Hermann is utterly devoted to keeping Newt well-fed and well-caffeinated.

The Conn-pod proves to be the most difficult installation. “It will accommodate you,” says Mako over breakfast, violently stabbing a piece of bacon with her fork. “Both of you, and your needs. I only need a little more time.”

Newt grows quiet when Hermann tries to talk to him about it. Hermann knows he’s thinking of the strain their minds and bodies will endure. Raleigh and Mako trained for this, and still find piloting an Jaeger an ordeal.

A four-way neural handshake. It’s not unprecedented. Crimson Typhoon had been a Jaeger with three pilots, after all, but it’s still risky. There’s every possibility that their minds will simply snap under the weight of the neural load. Hermann tries to spend his down time enjoying the hotel- meditating in the sauna, reading on the balcony overlooking the trees- but his mind can’t help but wander to the inevitable launch.

 

Hermann has grown to love the beach.

He’s taken to inviting Newt on walks in the early evening, and Newt has been more than willing to join him. Occasionally he’ll duck out of their conversations to jog down to the water and pick up something that’s caught his eye, bringing it back with a handful of wet sand and some variation on _do you want this? I’m gonna keep this_. His enthusiasm is infectious.

Tonight they talk about everything and nothing. The books Hermann’s been reading lately, or what color Mako should dye her hair, or whether or not Hermann could sail to Hong Kong with only the stars for navigation. Hermann insists that he could, Newt maintains that he can’t, and only after they’ve been arguing about it for a good ten minutes does Hermann broach the subject of Reanimator.

“Soon,” Newt says shortly, rubbing his hands together. “Soon. As soon as we finish rerouting the PONS system, we’re good to go.”

His cheerfulness sounds forced, and Hermann rests a hand on the small of Newt’s back to steady him. Newt responds immediately; his eyes fall half-closed, and he moves a little closer to Hermann’s side. He’s wearing an old band tee, worn thin by time and laundering. It feels soft under Hermann’s fingertips.

“Three days, then?” Hermann murmurs.

“Yeah,” says Newt. “Yeah.”

They walk on.

“I’m not afraid of the drift,” says Newt, suddenly.

“No one said you were.”

“I’m itching for it.”

“So am I.”

“I’m not afraid of piloting Reanimator, either. It’s not that. I know we, I know we can do that together, I can do that if you’re doing it with me, but I’m . . . afraid of what happens when we get down there.”

Hermann nods, but says nothing. He rubs small circles against the small of Newt’s back, and thinks of the monsters wrapped around his skin there. Newt’s armor. His protective coloration.

“You’re not afraid?” Newt bursts out.

“Of course I am!” Hermann retorts, incredulous. “I’m absolutely terrified. I was terribly sick the last time, if you’ll recall. I’m concerned that the strain of a four-way drift will cause irreparable damage to my mental functions, or even my motor skills. If we drift, I’ll chase the RABIT. Perhaps I’ll . . . the PONS won’t work on me, or the Jaeger won’t even be able to walk, or . . .”

His voice trails off, and he offers Newt a weak shrug.

“See, this,” Newt says, jabbing a finger at Hermann’s chest. “This is what I mean. You reeled all that off like a goddamn statistic, but you don’t, you don’t let your fear _get_ to you like I do. You don’t let it stop you.”

“Nonsense,” says Hermann.

They’ve stopped walking now, and the tide is creeping up the beach towards them. Hermann knows how it will play out. Newt will roll up his jeans and wade into the water. Hermann will walk back up the shore, and watch him. They’re as predictable as death and taxes.

“Nonsense,” Hermann repeats, more firmly this time. “I’ve never known anyone less inclined to be swayed by fear. Or have you forgotten how you faced down Otachi? I would call that brave.”

Newt’s expression twitches. Then he sputters into laughter, and his arms jump to cross themselves in front of his chest. “D-dude,” he wheezes, his voice hoarse. “You don’t- you don’t have any fucking- I wasn’t fucking brave, dude.”

“Oh?” Hermann says drily. “Is that so? Well, that’s news to me.”

“I wasn’t brave,” Newt insists frantically. “I couldn’t see, I, I lost my glasses and then it just fucking, it was right there, and it was gonna fucking eat me or hentai me or some shit and I wasn’t _brave._ ”

Hermann stares at him for a long moment. “I beg to differ,” he says, very slowly. “I think you were far braver than I would have been, under the circumstances.”

“Listen, I, listen, _listen,_ I- I pissed myself. I did, I didn’t mean to but God, it just kind of happened, and like the _whole_ time we were yelling at Herc about how to open the Breach I had, I had _pissed_ my _pants_. Okay?”

“Newton, are you having a stroke?”

 _“No,”_ Newt hisses desperately, “I’m just . . . I’m just trying to _explain_ to you that . . . that you have the nerves of a Jaeger pilot, and I don’t, and I’m worried that once we get down there and see Hohenheim up close and it comes at us, I’m gonna . . . freeze up. Or piss my pants. Or something. I’m not brave,” he finishes, lamely. “I’m not like you.”

Hermann closes his eyes. “Newton,” He sighs heavily, and opens them again. “Newton. Dear boy. Come here.”

Newt actually hesitates for a moment before getting into Hermann’s personal space. Hermann drops his cane in his haste to get his arms around Newt and fold him against his chest. “You’re not going to freeze up,” he mumbles into Newt’s hair. “I assure you, you’ll hear no end of it from me if you do.”

Hermann feels a full-body shudder from Newt that means repressed laughter, and takes that as a victory. He holds Newt closer and looks out at the sea. The water is black in the moonlight, almost as black as the night air. There’s a kind of nebulous symbiosis between sea and sky. _You’re the water, aren’t you?_ Hermann thinks, aimlessly trying to flatten out the cowlick at the back of Newt’s head. _And I, the moon. Separate, but forever pushing, pulling, and I, reflected in you, seem all the brighter._

He tries and fails to stifle his chuckle. Newt shifts in his arms. Hermann can feel him smiling against his collarbone. “What’s that?”

“Nothing,” Hermann murmurs. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Nothing much.”

“Come on,” Newt’s grin widens. “Come on, Herm.”

Hermann leans down to brush his lips against the curve of Newt’s ear, and whispers, _“If you kill a kaiju for me, I’ll kiss you in front of Hannibal Chau.”_

Newt’s audible groan of dismay is _immensely_ satisfying.

“That’s not fair!” he stammers, indignant. He pulls away and gives Hermann an open-handed thump on the chest. “That is not even _close_ to fair!”

Hermann shrugs. “I suppose if you freeze up . . .”

“I won’t freeze up, dude, I won’t even come _close_ to freezing up!” Newt insists. “Herm, I’ll fucking, I’ll kill you a kaiju with one hand behind my back. _Two_ hands,” he adds, putting both hands behind his back for emphasis and kicking up a puff of sand. “I’ll kick it to death with Reanimator’s IPL.”

“IPL?”

“Incredibly Powerful Legs.”

Hermann covers his mouth and laughs. “Oh, oh God,” he sighs. “We’re going to die down there.”

“Yeah, dude!” cries Newt, red-faced. “Probably!”

“Come here. Come here at once.”

Their lips meet, and Hermann closes his eyes. God help him, he's happy to risk his life for this.

He can no longer imagine a life without Newt in it.


	11. Dawn of the Final Day

Newt’s fingertips trace the length of Hermann’s spine and draw him up from his dreams into the waking world. He doesn’t bother opening his eyes yet. It’s the middle of the night, and Hermann knows that if he finds out what time it is, he’ll never get back to sleep.

“Go to sleep,” he mumbles, turning his face against the pillow. He can feel the warm night breeze against his face, and there’s a moment of bewilderment before he remembers they’d left the balcony door cracked open before they went to bed.

“I can’t,” Newt whispers. His voice is hoarse, like he’s just woken up. “I’ve been tossing and turning all night. It’s almost-”

“No,” Hermann grunts. “Don’t tell me the time.”

“Okay,” comes the murmur of acquiescence. “Okay,” Newt’s hand, spread flat against Hermann’s spine, retraces its path up the curve of Hermann’s back. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

Hermann bends his arm awkwardly behind him, feeling around for Newt’s hand, and when Newt laces their fingers together he gives Newt’s hand a little squeeze. “Don’t be sorry,” he says, his voice still sleep-rough but growing clearer. “You’re worried about the morning, aren’t you?”

“. . . Yeah,” says Newt. “Aren’t you?”

Hermann hefts up the blankets a little so he can roll over to face Newt, and Newt instinctively moves out of the way, giving Hermann room to position his leg. “Yes,” he says finally. “Of course I am.”

His eyes are still stinging with exhaustion, and their room is far, far too dark to see clearly. Dimly he can make out the rounded outline of Newt’s face on the pillow next to him, and his solemn, searching eyes. Hermann’s eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, and as they do, he becomes aware of the exhilarating new reality laid out before them. They have tonight. Before their next sunset, they will have drifted together.

He can see in the way Newt’s eyes go out of focus that the thought of it is stirring something hot and anxious in the pit of his belly. Hermann can feel it too. For one confused, otherworldly moment he likens the sensation to feeling a shadow fall over their bed, and looking up to find Reanimator, unfathomably vast, towering over them.

The anticipation of the drift is overwhelming. Hermann feels at once frightened and exhilarated, helpless and powerful, galvanized and vulnerable.

He’s not getting back to sleep.

It feels almost dreamlike, lying in the warm darkness with his partner so close at hand. No idea what time it is but bearing the knowledge that soon their time will run out.

Their fingers are still laced together. Hermann runs his thumb along Newt’s wrist- an invitation- and Newt closes the distance between them- a reply. Hermann can feel Newt’s stubble scratching against his neck as he kisses Hermann’s bare shoulder, and wonders if this is how nightmares are chased away.

Newt starts licking into the hollow of Hermann’s collarbone, slowly and regularly like an animal lapping at water, and it’s a gesture so strange and vaguely intimate that Hermann has to rub the sleep out of his eyes with the heel of his hand before he can fully process it. “Stop that,” he frowns. “Stop that, I am not a salt lick.”

“You smell amazing,” Newt mumbles, eyes still closed. He nuzzles his nose against Hermann’s skin and breathes deeply; Hermann can’t help but shiver when he exhales again. “You smell like . . . good pheromones, dude.”

Hermann runs his hand through his partner’s hair, cupping the back of his head. He smiles when he sees the exact moment Newt has to choose between continuing to kiss Hermann’s collarbone and leaning into Hermann’s touch. He ends up moving up to nibble at Hermann’s jawline instead, and Hermann rewards him with a wet, open-mouthed kiss on Newt’s cheek.

“Imagine it,” he whispers in Newt’s ear, determined to coax out the fear and replace it with exhilaration. “You and I, with the cords of our minds knotted together.”

“F-fuck . . .” Newt whimpers. Hermann can feel Newt’s erection pressed against his thigh, and his little aborted twitches as he tries not to grind against Hermann for friction. He moves his hands along Newt’s shoulders and squeezes his biceps, enjoying the feeling of the muscles moving there.

_Arms that have built a Jaeger._

Hermann groans softly and eases Newt over onto his back, pressing him down into the mattress with his hands on Newt’s shoulders. Newt turns his face away, feigning shyness, so Hermann cups his chin and tilts his face to meet him.

Newt shivers. “C’mon,” he whines, jerking his hips up weakly as he abandons the pretense of playing coy. “ _Please._ ”

Hermann’s pushes the blankets aside and nestles himself between Newt’s legs, pressing clumsy, too-eager kisses against Newt’s face and neck. “Needy,” he murmurs between kisses. “Needy, needy boy. God, I love you.”

Newt whines, jerks his hips again, and Hermann starts kissing his way down to Newt’s chest, just over his heart. His tattoos should be obscene- a hundred cataclysms, inked into his skin- but right now, they’re the most exquisite act of defiance Hermann has ever seen. He mouths at Newt’s chest and enjoys the sensation of his teeth against the kaiju’s teeth, his skin against Newt’s skin, and Newt is making these ghastly, _desperate_ noises that make Hermann want to bite down and hear him squeal louder. He bites at Newt’s nipple a little too hard, making Newt gasp, and Hermann is careful to lave his tongue over the spot with a murmur of apology.

“A-ah . . .” Newt groans, wrapping his arms around Hermann’s neck and pressing him closer. “Baby I- ah fuck . . .”

Hermann reaches up over Newt’s head and drags one of their pillows down the bed, tucking it under his knee. It won’t do him much good in the long run, but he’ll take the extra soreness for this. It occurs to him that he ought to be in peak physical shape- or what amounts to it, for him- to fly the Jaeger, but looking down at Newt, red-faced and squirming beneath him, Hermann realizes that that is not going to happen.

He reaches over to the bedside table and digs around in the drawer for their lubricant. One-handed, he steadies himself against Newt’s chest so he doesn’t lose his balance. He can feel Newt’s gaze, hot against his skin. “You’re so good to me,” Newt whispers.

Hermann uncaps the lubricant and Newt groans. Hermann sees, to his enormous satisfaction, that the sound has coaxed a thick drop of precum into gathering at the head of Newt’s cock. “Lie still,” he says softly.

He touches his hand to Newt’s chest and Newt makes a sound like he’s been punched.

His other hand finds its way down between Newt’s legs. Newt's cock is pretty and plump and just barely small enough to be a point of frustrated embarrassment for Newt, so Hermann takes care to stroke it firmly, lovingly, before moving down to massage the rim of Newt's entrance with two wet fingers. Hermann kisses Newt through the initial discomfort, distracting him as Hermann works him open. When Newt prepares himself like this it’s sloppy, too hasty and eager, but when Hermann does it for him, he takes his time.

He looks Newt in the eye- _ready?_ \- before he braces himself against the matters on either side of Newt’s head and eases himself in, ignoring the sharp spike of pain in his leg.

The movement draws a weak gasp from Newt and he clings to Hermann’s neck, his shoulders. Hermann closes his eyes with a shaky sigh, already lost to it, the hot, tight sensation of entering his lover. Thinking of how the most vulnerable part of his body is _inside_ Newt, giving him pleasure.

The thought makes him shudder and Hermann presses deeper, watching Newt sweat and tremble beneath him. The sounds he’s making are high and hungry and _wonderful_. The smell of Newt’s skin is making Hermann light-headed. He tries not to fall to pieces with love.

Hermann draws himself up into a kneel, letting Newt adjust to getting his legs up over Hermann’s shoulders, and drags Newt a little closer by the hips. His thrusts grow slower, deeper, seeking something out as he watches Newt’s cock twitch.

“You look,” Newt groans, but the words are choked out of him as Hermann rocks his hips against his. “Y-you look, you look like . . .”

Before he can even get the words out, Hermann finds that little bundle of nerves he’s been searching for and fucks into it.

Newt lets out a strangled scream and clutches at Hermann’s shoulders, his blunt fingernails digging into his back. He makes the sweetest, most _embarrassing_ noises when he's being fucked. His whole body tenses with pleasure, taut and trembling as Hermann thrusts into him again, leaning down to press himself against the length of Newt’s body again. “Ah,” Hermann says fondly, smiling against Newt’s gasping mouth. “There you are. Got you.”

 _“Hermann,”_ Newt says breathlessly, and that’s when Hermann feels it. The rising tide between them, the building climax, and with it, the eternal echo of the drift. He can feel Newt’s soft belly pressed up against his own, but more than that he can feel the throb of Newt’s own heart. He can feel Newt’s fingernails, chewed dull and digging into his back, and he can feel his own kisses when he smothers Newt with them. “This,” Newt gasps, rocking his hips more insistently against Hermann’s. “This, but- but-”

“Better,” Hermann breathes. “This but better.”

“Hours of it . . .”

“Hours, hours.”

_Hours of immersing ourselves in each other. Hours of hearing your thoughts, and you hearing mine._

It feels like the lines between their bodies have begun to blur. Hermann can feel Newt’s pleasure, his _satisfaction_ , and the thought that it's  _him_ who’s satisfying Newt like this has Hermann’s hands white-knuckled in the bedsheets. “I love you,” he whispers. No, Newt whispers it to him. It doesn’t matter, he doesn’t care, his climax is creeping up on him and he wants to bury himself so deeply in Newt that they’ll never untangle themselves from each other.

Newt’s mouth is slack, his eyes half-closed. His lips are swollen from Hermann’s kisses and that’s just an invitation for more, so Hermann leans down and slots their mouths together. _I love you, I love us, us, us,_ he thinks with as much intensity as he can, just in case the thought might spill over into Newt’s head, and he can tell the exact moment it does because Newt lets out an ecstatic sob and lets his head drop back against the pillow.

“Shh, lover,” Hermann gasps, dropping his forehead against Newt’s chest. “I’m- _ah-_ I-I’m . . .”

He stiffens and screws his eyes shut, held in a moment of silent, shivering expectancy.

Then the tension peaks just high enough for him to find his release, and he falls.

The relief is exquisite. Hermann grits his teeth tight, not caring how he looks as a shudder ripples through him and he lets out a strangled, almost silent sigh. His hips twitch weakly against Newt’s before falling still, and when Hermann opens his eyes, he finds Newt looking back at him. Gray-green eyes, like rain in a dirty city. A red ring of blood in one of them that matches Hermann’s own.

It’s like looking into the heart of a star.

Hermann slumps, exhausted and sated, against Newt’s chest. Newt’s release feels sticky between their bellies, and Hermann’s leg has lost all circulation, but the rest of him feels _radiant._ Like he could melt into stardust and disperse into space.

Light-headed and happy, Hermann brushes one more kiss against Newt’s chest before carefully withdrawing from him, wincing at Newt’s whimper of protest. Then he rolls onto his back, sleep already threatening to drag him back down into dreams.

Newt tucks himself against Hermann’s side at once. His hand finds Hermann’s thigh to rub the feeling back into it. “You’re such a stud,” he murmurs.

Hermann scoffs and gently shoves Newt’s shoulder. “Don’t tease me.”

“I’m not.”

Hermann smiles, but doesn’t say anything. He laces his fingers with Newt’s again and together they stare into the darkness over their bed.

Sleep comes easily, and they don’t wake again until sunrise.

 

“Take a deep breath.”

Hermann breathes.

“Now let it out.”

Exhale.

“Good,” says Mako. She sets her clipboard aside. Hermann can see Newt’s clumsy Winry Rockbell still scrawled on the back in Sharpie. “Lift up your arms for me?”

Hermann raises his arms and Mako steps in close to check the fit of his suit. Her face looks washed out in the harsh fluorescent lights of the shipping hanger, but her eyes are kind, and her hands are gentle when she zips his suit up the back but not gentle enough to suggest that he’s an invalid. The armor required for Jaeger control is extensive, and being wrestled into it is an ordeal originally intended for an entire pit crew. Hermann lowers his arms, turns left, then right, does whatever Mako tells him to if it means this will be over sooner.

The armor came in two sets, colloquially referred to as the skeleton and the exoskeleton. The skeleton amounted to a tight, rubbery circuitry suit of black polymer, threaded through with synaptic processors. Over that went the exoskeleton. A sealed polycarbonate shell with full life support and a fast-acting emergency interface, intended for one purpose and one purpose only; keep the pilot alive.

“Arms up again,” says Mako, and Hermann raises them. “Try to hold still while I secure the exoskeleton in place.”

She assembles it piece by piece, starting with the chest plate, and then the back plate, with it’s hollowed-out cradle along the spine to allow for the interface driver to be plugged in. She has to drill some of the pieces down firmly- getting out of the exoskeleton is as much of an ordeal as getting in.

Hermann’s cane is leaning up against the far wall. He keeps his gaze level, his eyes straight ahead. He breathes through his nose and doesn’t let on that it’s difficult to stand. When Mako straightens up after kneeling to adjust his boots, she catches him glancing at his cane, and gives him a small smile. “I would not worry,” she says. “This Jaeger interface is unlike any that came before it. I told you I would accommodate you.”

Hermann licks his lips. His mouth feels terribly dry. He looks down at himself, fully armored in black polycarbonate. The sight of it takes him right back to being twenty-six, when he would have given anything to wear such a uniform.

Mako clasps her hands together in front of her. “Are you ready?”

“My helmet?”

“In the Conn-pod, on your chair.”

Hermann nods dimly. _Chair._ Mako turns and leads him into the shadow of Reanimator’s skull, and he follows her slowly. She doesn’t offer to let him lean on her shoulder, thank God.

Reanimator’s head blocks all view of the far wall but Hermann can hear the sudden grinding, squealing sounds of metal on metal, and sunlight begins to flood the chamber.

The doors are rolling back. He can hear the sound of the ocean.

 

The inside of Reanimator’s mouth is cramped and sickeningly warm.

They had entered from behind the creature’s jaw, where an entry point had been opened up and resealed with pressurized metal. They leave the door open behind them while Mako leads him in, and inside, bickering with Raleigh on the right side of the Conn-pod, is Newt.

The mesh of processor relays gleaming here and there from under Newt’s armor seems decidedly more organic on Newt’s suit than his own. Hermann’s seem to glow like golden circuitboards, and Newt’s are blue as kaiju veins. He looks over when he hears Hermann’s boots on the metal floor, and whatever scathing retort he’d prepared to throw at Raleigh dies in his throat. He swallows. “Dude.”

Hermann looks away quickly, so he doesn’t turn red under Newt’s stare, and starts scoping out the modified Jaegertech. Above him, the ridges of Reanimator’s palate shine an ugly dark blue. In front of him, at the head of the Conn-pod, the interior space seems encased by the impenetrable wall of metal and bone that make up Reanimator’s teeth. The biggest of its fangs are the length of Hermann’s body, and the wide, holographic screen projected in front of them is not enough to hide them from view entirely. This will function as their window to the outside world. If their holograms go out, they’re flying blind.

He hears Newt’s boots squeaking across the floor towards him, and a hand on his shoulder. “No fair,” says Newt, nodding towards the left hemisphere control board. “You get the Captain Kirk chair.”

Hermann lets out a shaky breath. “Yes,” he says, relieved. “I suppose I do.”

A pilot’s chair with all a Jaeger pilot’s necessary instruments has the taken place of the standard Mark I piloting rig on the left side of the Conn-pod. Hermann’s helmet is resting on the black polymer seat, and Mako picks it up for him, has him tilt his head down so she can put it on. Raleigh, who’s been carrying Newt’s helmet under his arm, tries to get him to do the same, but Newt takes it out of his hands and puts it on himself.

The world as seen through the visor is almost too clear and smooth. Hermann glances over at Newt, who is not wearing his glasses, and wonders if Newt’s visor is working double-time to correct his nearsightedness.

Along the left side of the Conn-pod, the data readouts and neural relays glow amber yellow. The right side, however, is largely taken up by a vast pane of kaiju bunker glass, fused into the wall. Behind it, floating corpse-like in cloudy blue water, is Reanimator’s secondary brain.

It’s an ugly, grayish thing, the size of a car. Only bits of it are visible at a time as it bumps its sucker-like tendrils against the glass. Hermann forces his eyes away from it, grimacing at thought of drifting with it. Of allowing such a thing into his head a second time.

Newt’s piloting rig is the Mark I standard, but for a great deal of clear plastic piping, the same as the kind Hermann had observed on Reanimator’s exterior. It’s obvious from the set-up that they’re intended to connect to Newt’s vital regions, including his arms and legs. The strings of organic tissue inside are clammy white and dripping something that smells foul.

The moment Hermann sits down, lights snap on all down the left side of the Conn-pod. The view screen projected in front of the creature’s teeth abruptly changes color from blue to gold, and new information begins to scroll. Exterior damage, life support systems, stats for the emergency protocols (uninitiated) and the four-way neural handshake (uninitiated.) Hermann raises both arms off the armrests and similar data readouts flicker to life around his arms. For a moment, he imagines that deep, deep in Reanimator’s chest, he hears the _crocus ultima_ roar.

Mako kneels in front of him and clamps his legs down tight against his seat. She looks up at him. “Have you run through any training simulations?”

“I programmed the training simulations,” Hermann says quietly, watching data scroll in infinity loops around his arms.

Beside him, Raleigh is helping Newt into his pilot’s rig. The legs are always clamped in first, and then the arms. Newt is free to move, unlike Hermann, but his movements are restricted. Hermann watches as Raleigh begins to wire the loose plastic tubing into Newt’s suit, along the arms and legs and up the spine.

Newt notices Hermann looking at him and gives him an awkward thumbs up. When data readouts begin to glow in the air around his arms too, these ones blue and full of information Hermann doesn’t recognize, Newt makes a gesture in the air to activate pilot-to-pilot communication. Hermann hears him, abruptly, through the speakers in his helmet.

“You good, big guy?” says Newt, his voice crackling a little over the connection.

“I’m fine. Are you?” Hermann insists.

Newt smiles shakily. “Peachy keen. Just golden.” Raleigh hooks up the last of the connection tubes, this one clamping into place at the back of Newt’s neck, and Hermann sees Newt’s wince before he can hide it.

“Fortune favors the brave,” says Hermann. He thinks of a night holding Newt on the beach, and a night long before that, when Newt had been prepared to die for the sake of a drift.

Newt gives him a grateful look, and Raleigh steps back, assessing. “We’re good to go,” he says finally, with a glance over at Mako for confirmation.

She nods, and touches Hermann’s arm with her fingertips. “We’re going back to Beach LOCCENT,” she says, “with Mr. Choi and Mr. Chau.”

“See?” says Newt, cricking his neck back and forth in discomfort. “Even _she’s_ calling it Beach LOCCENT.”

“Thank you, Mako,” Hermann says quietly. She nods once, and with a gesture to Raleigh, the both of them disappear out into the shipping hanger and begin to seal the door shut behind them.

“Hermann,” Newt says at once, pulling up a better view of the outside through their holograph screen. The hanger doors are wide, wide open now. Waiting for them to drag Newt’s creation out into the water. “Hermann, _Hermann._ ”

“I know,” says Hermann sharply, and immediately hates himself for snapping. “I know, it’s . . . I know.”

“I hope this doesn’t go all Evangelion on us.”

“It won’t be like Evangelion,” Hermann says. He flips one of the heavy plastic switches on the arm of his chair, and Tendo’s voice crackles to life in their ears.

_“Securing the Conn-pod. Everything all right down there, gentlemen? Verbal check-in, copy?”_

“Hermann Gottlieb, copy,” says Hermann. He can feel a slight vibration in the floor. An engine, or a heartbeat.

“Newton Geiszler, copy,” says Newt, silhouetted against the tank on the wall beside him. Hermann can see the kaiju brain inside seem to vibrate with agitation. Its tendrils suck at the glass with dull slurps.

_“Pilot-to-pilot protocol, engaging now.”_

Hermann feels the vibrations in the floor grow more intense. > _initiate neural handshake? < _glows like a warning in the center of the screen.

“Reanimator, ready and aligned,” says Newt.

 _“Okie dokie, boys,”_ says Tendo. _“Prepare for four-way neural handshake. T-minus fifteen seconds. Fourteen. Thirteen . . .”_

“I love you,” says Hermann, his hand already on the mute button.

“I love you too, man,” Newt says, his voice a little unsteady. “I love you so much.”

Un-mute.

_“Ten, nine, eight . . .”_

This whole room smells like kaiju blue and stale electricity. He can almost taste it in the air.

_“Seven, six, five . . .”_

One more drift with a kaiju. One more glimpse of the hive mind. But wouldn’t he drift with a hundred kaiju, for Newt’s sake?

_“Four, three, two . . .”_

Once more unto the breach, dear friend.

_“One.”_

 

_> neural handshake initiated  <_


	12. The Drift

_The Drift is an ocean._

_It fills his lungs, stirs his heart to beat faster. When he opens his eyes he can see the facets of his mind, shimmering and shifting like so many diamonds in the water. Two lifetimes of memories, laid out before him in a series of perfect mathematical fractals._

_Hello again, says the hive mind._

_Somewhere between sequencing DNA in his uncle’s garage and laying flowers on Alan Turing’s memorial there is a vast planet, lit by a dying sun. His whole body aches with longing. He wants to breathe the air of alien worlds. To dig his claws into the radioactive soil._

_Shh. Not today._

_Hermann relaxes into the Drift and searches for a home in the glittering lights around him. An anchor. A single thought, shared by two, that might linger through the cognitive dissonance. A poem. A promise._

_I have loved you for so long._

_There it is._

_He surrenders to the touch of Newt’s hands against his skin. He chases the comet trails of Newt’s thoughts._

_I have loved you for so long._

_Steady yourself against me. We’re not alone here._

_Memories grow solid beneath his fingertips. Like ice, he thinks, as he rips the tape out of his dad’s old cassettes. Mom singing La Traviata. Mom singing Manon Lescaut. He wears the clumps of tape like scalps on his belt when he plays a gig at the shittiest dive bar in Boston and when he comes home bruised and drunk he thinks his dad is going to hit him but he doesn’t, he never does._

_That’s not me, Hermann thinks, as he laughs in his father’s face, saying something clever about Germans and their poor history with walls, and one stinging slap later he’s packing his suitcase, listening to his brothers and sister arguing in the next room over who’s getting his cut of the inheritance._

_Drowning in the Drift is easy, easy, easy. Newt’s voice is more of a sensation than a sound, like the ripple of sonar through water. Hermann can feel Newt handling every thought in his head with the careful delicacy of a scientist. But the water is warm, and the Drift is so sweet, and when Newt’s voice pleads for him to come back, Hermann doesn’t listen._

_He doesn’t listen because he’s too busy staring at the half-finished number on his phone._

_Hermann’s not sure how long he’s been sitting on the couch, staring at it. He hasn’t showered, hasn’t shaved. The windows of his flat are dark. This is, he thinks to himself with detached interest, the worst day of his life. Staring down the barrel of all the numbers he needs to call._

_The caterer first. Then the florist. Then the photographer. A hundred little moving parts, grinding to a halt. There are pamphlets scattered across the coffee table, and an open binder packed with clippings. All of it will have to go. All of it. Everything._

_What could he possibly say? I’m afraid we won’t be needing that cake after all. The wedding has been called off. I’ll pay you for your trouble, of course. Thank you. Goodbye._

_It’s not real._

_I’ve got you. Come back, dude. It’s not real._

_“It’s my fault,” Hermann whispers, and his voice in the drift sounds staticky and faded, like the voice of an old radio. “I wasn’t good enough for her. I wasn’t ever good enough for her, and he was.”_

_No, honey, no._

_He can see Newt now. Sees him kneeling on the floor of Hermann’s tiny flat in Berlin, the one he’s never visited except in letters._

_It wasn’t your fault. It was her, it’s all on her._

_“It is my fault,” Hermann insists, because his heart is a gaping wound only two days old, and he is going to bleed out before he finishes dialing the caterer. “I was busy. I neglected her. I was too . . . the work, and the war . . . the work was everything. God, I wish you were here, but you’re in bloody Boston and I’m . . . I’m . . .”_

_No, I’m not. I’m right here, dude. I’m right here. We’re drifting._

_Hermann shakes his head, a tiny, panicked little thing._

_Yeah, we are. We really, really are. We’re drifting and you’re chasing the rabbit._

_“Drifting?” Hermann breathes. “With you?”_

_That’s right, Herm. We’re drifting, and it’s not just us._

_There’s a prickling heat on the back of his neck, like something is watching him. He turns and sees the dead, dark eye of a kaiju, gleaming outside the window of his flat. Beyond it, he knows, lies the dying sun of an alien world._

_His nose starts to drip blood._

_Hermann cries out as the rabbit memory fractures around him. Newt’s hands find his own and Hermann holds tight as their brains knit themselves together. They hate their father, they love their father. Their mother is dead, their mother is alive and in Europe. Their hands know chalk, their hands know scalpels._

_The warm and weightless ocean of the Drift is home to alien worlds, yes, but also to the ever-expanding universes inside Newt’s head. Hermann pours himself into both of them, unable to deny one without denying the other._

_I have loved you for so long._

_There it is. Home._

_Their connection stabilizes at last and Hermann lets the Drift carry them both together. They seek out a memory to ground them amid the glimmers. The axis on which their world turns._

_They find it in the helicopter out of Hong Kong._

_Newt kisses him for the first time, too hard and too quick, up against the seat while Hermann’s still opening the first-aid kit. Newt tastes like blood and Hermann tastes like bile and it shouldn’t be like this, but the plan’s not going to work, we’re going to arrive too late and I can’t die until I kiss you, I didn’t wait for you for ten years so I could die before I kissed you._

_I have loved you for so long._

_> connection stable  <_

Newt breathes in.

_“Neural handshake, strong and holding.”_

Hermann breathes out.

_“You are in alignment, repeat, you are in alignment. Calibration check?”_

Hermann opens his eyes and for a moment the world doesn’t look real. The glow of the plasma displays burn trails of light into his eyes. The blood from his nose is dripping into his mouth. But he is stable.

“Left hemisphere, calibrating,” he whispers, raising both arms and clenching his fists. The data scrolling in circles around his hands switches abruptly to pilot controls. Something groans deep in the heart of Reanimator, like metal plates grinding against each other.

“Right hemisphere, calibrating,” says Newt. His arms are raised, his fists clenched just as tight.

Hermann meets Newt’s eyes across the Conn-pod. His first instinct is to look away, shrink back into himself, but Newt is _inside his head_ , and Hermann’s every thought, no matter how fleeting, is spread open and available to him. There is nowhere for Hermann to hide, no walls to build up. Their minds fold together like a deck of cards.

_> calibration check complete  <_

Hermann looks down at his clenched fist. Before the neural impulse to open his hand can even travel down his arm, Newt’s hand is already opening. They exchange another look, and as one, they slam their hands down. Reanimator’s claws dig into the floor and grip it like they’re going to tear it to pieces. With a great, shuddering groan of metal, they begin to crawl down onto the beach.

Hermann’s body is made of metal and flesh and electricity. He can feel the sand between his fingers when they bury Reanimator’s claws into the beach, and the wind whistling past his head when they slowly push themselves up onto Reanimator’s haunches. He feels everything.

Newt can feel everything too. His voice comes crackling through the speakers in their helmets, not that Hermann needs his voice to know his thoughts.

What Newt says is, “I could fucking annihilate a kaiju right now,” but his excitement is rippling through the Drift, and his head is full of _I saw it I saw what you meant by that notebook I saw how you really see me oh god is that how you really see me oh god I love you I love you like this but forever just like this but forever._

 _“Hoo boy, looks like Reanimator is up and walking!”_ Tendo crows from the speakers. _“Amen! I thought we lost Hermann for a sec. You almost started chasing the rabbit there, bud.”_

“Almost,” says Hermann. He nods gratefully at Newt. “Almost.”

He forces himself to focus on the hum of plasma energy around his arms, and the controls that hang glowing in the air around his hands. It’s surprisingly easy to find a comfortable balance between the reality of the Jaeger and the etherial heat of the Drift.

Together, Newt and Hermann turn to face the ocean. _“You are cleared for descent,”_ says Tendo. _“ETA thirty minutes till Hohenheim engagement point.”_

Newt lets out a whoop of excitement and makes little grasping claws with his hands. Reanimator’s head swings from side to side as they scope out the horizon. Newt’s child-like excitement sings to Hermann through the Drift- he almost wants to do something to indulge it, this exuberance that they share.

 _Just walk normally,_ Hermann thinks, trying not to smile.

_Dude, look at me. Look me dead in the eyes._

Hermann looks at him. Newt stares him down, runs his tongue over his teeth. Then he lifts up his foot and brings it down hard, like Godzilla crushing a paper city, and Reanimator begins to walk.

 

Water displacement makes them slow and heavy. The creep along the seafloor, their floodlights illuminating the water around them. The deeper they go, the blacker the water becomes.

Hermann glances at Newt repeatedly as they make their way towards the kaiju engagement point. Newt’s stare is focused, his teeth set. Behind him, the kaiju brain lashes its suckers against the glass.

 _You look like a proper Jaeger pilot,_ Hermann thinks, the thought dispersing out into the Drift.

 _So do you,_ comes the answering reply, and with it rises a wave of lusty affection that makes Hermann’s whole body grow hot. He turns his attention swiftly to his flight controls, trying resolutely to keep a straight face.

The Drift is intoxicating. Hermann is absolutely mad for it, burning like a live wire. It’s like finally feeling full after years of starvation. Drifting with Reanimator is a delicate balancing act between large-scale robotics, cognitive dissonance, and semi-organic biomechanical engineering, but right now Hermann wants nothing more than to sink back into the warmth of the Drift, wrap his arms around Newt, and forget it all. Forget Reanimator, forget Hannibal Chau. Forget the kaiju.

The kaiju.

They should have found it by now.

The sensation of cold seawater should numb Hermann’s skin at this depth, but it doesn’t. He has Reanimator’s half-kaiju body to thank for that, he supposes. Kaiju were built to survive underwater. Peerless and powerful in an alien world ill-equipped to receive them. Hermann can feel the hive mind in the Drift too, full of pain and pathological anger, along with the occasional flicker of malevolent awareness.

Hermann turns his head first one way, then the other. There’s nothing around them but darkness. He breathes deeply, as though trying to catch the scent of kaiju blue. Beside him, Newt drops down onto his haunches and Reanimator does the same. He twitches his head from the left to the right, mirroring Hermann’s movement. He grimaces. “We should have found it by now, dude.”

Hermann pulls up their radar and watches Hohenheim’s red dot pulse on the screen. Tendo’s voice buzzes through the Conn-pod, telling them they should be right on top of it. Still their floodlights illuminate nothing. Only black water, with bright white detritus floating in it like stars.

“You’re right,” says Newt, “but for fuck’s sake, be careful.”

The thought of coaxing knowledge from the hive mind comes to Hermann several seconds after Newt has already responded to it. He leans his mind into the Drift. Searches for a thought, a memory. An emotion beyond pain and rage.

_Sleep. Be careful, I love you. Lie still and decay. Sleeper cell. My uncle got clean when my mom left lie still and pollute corrupt radioactive sleeper cell he did it for me and my dad I loved him for that the interface drive transmits our nerve impulses into Reanimator itself it is as dangerous as it is pleasurable lie still and corrupt radioactive sleeper cell you were not meant for this you are our last resort._

“I can’t . . . parse it,” Hermann mutters. “I can’t clearly read the hive mind. You’re . . . you’re everywhere. Everywhere.”

“Where is it?” Newt insists. Reanimator shifts its metal-and-bone limbs uneasily in the darkness. “Herm, if we don’t fucking find this thing, I’m, I’m gonna lose my goddamn mind, dude.”

“I’m trying,” Hermann snaps, and the left side of his face explodes with pain. Reanimator’s whole upper body snaps to the right with the impact, metal shrieking on metal. Newt throws his arms out. The Drift floods with an adrenaline dump of fear and chemicals and _shit shit shit we found it it found us Herm are you okay are you fucking okay baby_.

They regain their balance and are already backing away. Their visual display shimmers for a moment- Hermann heart stops- then stabilizes again, and Hohenheim is _there_.

It’s bigger than them. Much bigger.

It floats in the ocean before them like some sort of fleshy flying saucer, with two globe-like eyes staring at them like silver moons. Hohenheim is bigger by far than Reanimator, and wider, but flat like a ray or skate. All wet, cracked gray skin, glowing a toxic blue bright enough to be blinding.

Curled up and over the creature’s back is a sting the size and shape of a wrecking ball. Its tail is a thick knot of muscle, and Hermann watches, stunned into inaction, as it coils tighter.

_Oh, God. Hermann._

The sting snaps forward like a cobra’s head and Hermann’s vision whites out. Reanimator stumbles back, disoriented, and Hermann gasps from the shock. No use stifling the screams. Newt’s feeling the same pain, the same terror.

“Newton!” Hermann yells. “Together! Both hands!”

“Right!” Newt shouts, but his eyes are wide with shock. He and Hermann snap their arms forward.

Reanimator is slow but Hohenheim doesn’t even try to move, and they attempt to bury their claws into the creature’s back. Hermann scrabbles for purchase- the rough, slippery skin fails to give- but Reanimator’s hands slip right off. Hohenheim, enraged, flares its flaps up and howls. It’s a low, low, tremulous bass that makes Hermann’s teeth rattle.

Then the kaiju begins to circle them, slicing through the water in ever narrowing circles. Anticipation rises up in Hermann, threatening to choke him, but it doesn’t matter. Not as long as Newt is moving with him. Hermann reaches for him in the Drift, tries to feel out their connection and hold onto it. It doesn’t work.

Hermann’s stomach drops. He nearly pulls something trying to turn around in his chair. “Newton!” he snaps, trying and failing to keep his voice steady. “For God’s sake, Newton, not now!”

Newt’s chest is heaving. Blood is dripping from his nose. “I can’t-” he says shakily. “We- we can’t break its skin, we can’t- it’s circling us, looking for a weakness, looking for us, looking for _me! Hermann! It’s looking for me!_ ”

 _“You are out of alignment!”_ yells Tendo through the speakers. _“Repeat, you are out of alignment! Newt is way out!”_

Hermann becomes suddenly, terribly aware of how vulnerable they are, trapped at the bottom of the ocean in a metal box with no escape pods. Hohenheim speeds past their view screen. It leaves a trail of roiling water in its wake.

Hermann forces down the blind panic, closes his eyes and

_the water is dragging Newt down into the dark places of the Drift, far from where Hermann can reach him. It’s too late. He’s chasing the rabbit._

_Hermann, tied to Newt’s mind and the hive mind as though by steel cables, feels the sharp, agonizing pressure of being torn in two directions at once. Memories solidify and disperse around him like a kaleidoscope of abstract thought. Come back, he wants to scream. Come back. I can’t do this without you._

_Back through the Drift comes an echo of cognizant thought. Fear beyond anything Hermann has ever felt or understood. The fear is too much. I’m losing myself, Herm. I’m losing my mind. I’m losing you._

Hermann slams his shaking fists down on the arms of his chair. His body goes still.

_I’ll still be here when the drift is over._

_Let me take it for you. I’ll do it._

_Let me chase the rabbit._

_All at once, Hermann forgets Hohenheim. He forgets Reanimator. He forgets everything but the waking nightmare of bodies pressed against bodies, crammed up against each other in the stinking, sweating underground. Hermann’s every breath is choked out of him. He can’t move an inch in any direction._

_He’s going to die down here._

_A thunderous crash rocks the city to its foundations. Hermann’s heart is in his throat. “He stopped right above us,” he stammers, his voice cracking. He can hear the concrete beginning to crumble. “Oh my god. Oh my god. This isn’t a refuge. This- this is a buffet line!”_

_The earth shakes with the force of the second impact. The lamps swing wildly overhead. The lights flicker, illuminating a hundred petrified faces as civilians duck out of the way._

_“He knows I’m here. He knows I’m here!” It leaves his mouth as a panicked shout, and god, Hermann wants to go home. He wants to wake up. He wants it to be over, over, over._

_“Shh!” hisses a girl in ribbons. “He knows we’re all here!”_

_“No, you don’t understand!” Hermann says desperately, trying to get the words out before he fucking cries. “He’s trying to get me! He knows I’m here and he’s trying to get me!”_

_He’s clinging to someone, anyone, and they push him aside and he can’t stand, he can’t fucking walk, and the girl is shouting something in Chinese but he doesn’t speak Chinese, and there’s dust falling from the ceiling as the bunker begins to crack, and god, god, god, it’s all gone wrong and it’s all his fault and he never even got to kiss him._

_Someone’s elbow hits Hermann good and he goes down. His cane clatters across the ground and pain like he’s never known before rips through his hip like lightning. He gasps and bends double, curled inwards on himself. There’s no way he can stand up again without help. Everyone’s backing away. He’s alone, lying on the wet concrete._

_The cracks in the ceiling widen._

_He wants to go home._

_The roof caves in and Hermann is too petrified to scream. He’s silent when claws the size of cars bury themselves in the rubble and drag through the dust, up, up, up. Digging for something. Digging for him._

_His ears are ringing. Has he gone deaf?_

_Teeth replace the talons. Gnawing the broken earth like a dog worrying a wound. Hermann is dimly aware that he’s being drenched by the rainwater pouring through the hole. People are screaming, crowding against the walls. Bleeding from the fallen debris. That’s his fault. He said he was a doctor. He pushed people aside to get here._

_Otachi doesn’t care what kind of man he is. Otachi doesn’t care what he deserves._

_Otachi is going to eat him anyway._

_Hermann closes his eyes._

 

_NO._

 

_He remembers the Drift._

_All at once, like a reconnected circuit._

 

_NO._

 

_It’s loud enough to fill up his whole head. There’s no room for anything else._

_Hermann opens his eyes. The rainwater on his face feels so real. The ringing in his ears, the blood rushing to his head. Otachi’s tongue unfolds like a bioluminescent flower above him, but the fear is gone._

_Newt is standing between him and Otachi._

_Hermann can see his hands shaking._

_Otachi’s tongue licks at the air, glowing like the dangling light of some strange, deep-sea fish. Newt doesn’t move away._

_Hermann pushes himself to his knees. The concrete is soaking wet from the rain. “Newt,” he croaks. “Newt.”_

 

_NOT HIM._

 

_The tongue twitches, then withdraws, like an eel shrinking back into its burrow._

_Then the roof caves in around them as Otachi’s jaws come crashing down, mouth open and dripping and shrieking like breaking metal. Hermann scrambles back but Newt stands his ground, throws up his hands and_

seizes Hohenheim’s jaw as it tries to tear Reanimator’s head off, one hand on either side, holding its mouth open as it snaps and snarls ineffectually. The power of its forward momentum forces Reanimator back, leaving huge grooves in the seafloor.

The data readout in Hermann’s visor starts blinking red. _“Bloody hell,”_ he snarls, making a wrenching movement with his hands, trying to hyperextend the kaiju’s jaw. “Throw it off! Throw the damn thing off!”

“I’m trying!” Newt shouts back. They grunt in exertion as they heave Hohenheim off them. It falls back, flapping wildly as it recuperates. Hermann finally gets a good look at the creature’s mouth. Its underside is almost completely split in half, unfolding itself to reveal teeth and bioluminescent saliva.

“Newton,” Hermann gasps. His helmet feels uncomfortably tight. He wants to _breathe._ “Newton, we can’t break the skin.”

Hohenheim streaks through the water towards them, teeth bared, stinger poised to strike. Newt settles into a crouch, arms spread wide and loose at his sides. “I know what can,” he hisses.

Hermann already knows what he’s thinking.

The stinger narrowly grazes Reanimator’s shoulder as they hurl themselves to the left, struggling to keep their balance as pain lances through both of their shoulders. Hermann snaps his hands up and digs Reanimator’s fingers into the fleshy bulb of the kaiju’s sting, squeezing down hard, and Hohenheim makes a noise like tectonic plates bumping into each other as it tries to shake them off.

“Now!” Newt yells, and with an agonized heave they manage to drag Hohenheim forward by the tail.

_I can feel the water moving around me._

The hive mind is screaming in the back of Hermann’s head, fighting against destroying one of its own. The view screen goes red. The pilot controls glowing around Hermann’s hands; red.

_I can feel the heat of an alien sun._

It’s not enough that the kaiju dies. He wants to kill it. He wants to be the one.

No. He wants them to kill it together.

_I can feel you in my mind._

“Three!” Hermann shouts. “Two! And-”

They wrench Hohenheim’s tail around and drive the stinger into the back of its throat.

The stinger pierces the skin like a knife through a rotting apple. They twist it in the wound, gouging it deeper until they strike the seafloor beneath them. Like pinning a beetle to a card.

It stops struggling.

Kaiju blue spills out into the water, thick as smoke.

Hermann’s ears are ringing. His hands, still hanging in the air as they grip the sting, drop and fall still.

_> target eliminated  <_

Hermann depresses the broadcasting switch. “Tendo?” he says weakly, only to be met by a whoop so loud that the signal fizzles into static.

_“Hohenheim’s signal is out! How are you guys looking down there? What’s the damage? Come in, Reanimator! Verbal check-in!”_

Hermann gives his head a little shake. “. . . Hermann Gottlieb, copy. All systems functional. A few bangs and scrapes but no significant damage to the hardware.”

“Newt Geiszler, copy,” says Newt, stunned.

There’s another crackle over the line before Hannibal’s voice replaces Tendo’s. _“Get back here right this goddamn minute, you hear me?”_ he grunts. He sounds worried. _“Bring the fuckin’ kaiju with you.”_

“Yes, sir,” says Hermann distantly, his hand already hovering over the Mute button. “Right away, sir.”

Silence falls over the Conn-pod. They watch as kaiju blue fills their screen, muddying their vision. Hermann can trace the measure of Newt’s heartbeat, slightly faster than his own. It’s like carrying two hearts in his chest at once.

Hermann looks around at anything else, the floor, the screen, the console, but the moment he accidentally catches Newt’s eye they both sputter into hysterical laughter.

“Oh my god,” Newt hiccups, his hand on his forehead. “Oh my _god._ ”

“You were-” Hermann stammers, stumbling over his words like Newt does when he gets worked up. “You were- you- _Newton._ ”

Newt lets out a shaky sigh, runs his hand down his face. “We gotta . . . we gotta get back, we gotta show Tendo.”

“Yes, yes. We should.”

“I don’t want it to end.”

“Neither do I.”

_We moved so well together Herm did you fucking feel it I felt it god we were fucking rock stars weren’t we._

_Rock stars._

_Rock stars._

_I want to get my hands on you so bad._

_Then let’s go home._

_I am home._

Newt breathes in. Hermann breathes out.

_Let’s go._

 

They drag Hohenheim’s body along the seafloor, leaving a long, toxic trail of kaiju blue behind them.

Newt can’t stop talking, ranting about how smoothly Reanimator operated, how well they worked together. His brain is full of adrenaline and endorphins, and Hermann can’t stop looking at him. _Walk slower,_ he thinks. _I want this to last._ Newt slows down without even catching a breath.

It’s a long, slow slog back to shore, and Hermann enjoys every minute of it. Eventually he realizes Newt has fallen silent, hasn’t even been speaking _aloud,_ but Hermann can still hear him. They carry on whole conversations like that, all the way back to the beach.

Newt sighs happily when they finally break the surface of the water. “Herm, this is like, by far the coolest thing we’ve ever done.”

“Speak for yourself,” Hermann huffs, groaning with the exertion of dragging Hohenheim through the silt.

At the shoreline, they’re forced to drop to all fours, rather than remaining upright. Newt carefully crouches down and makes a crawling motion to drag Reanimator farther up onto the sand. Hermann flops Hohenheim’s corpse onto the beach next to them, where it unrolls flat and belly-up. It’s mouth reminds Hermann of some sort of vast cavern, with kaiju blue pooling up in its throat like an underground lake.

 _“Alright, gentlemen. My instruments are telling me you’re stable,”_ says Tendo. Hermann can hear the smile in his voice. _“You may disengage when ready.”_

_> disengage neural handshake?  <_

Newt takes a deep breath. He looks over at Hermann, who nods shortly, and both of them bring their hands together in front of them.

 _“Disengage,”_ they say in unison.

 

_Withdrawing from the Drift is like breaking the surface of the sea. Torn from the warm embrace of water suddenly and violently, and thrust into the solitary confinement of his own skull._

 

Hermann gasps. His stomach turns at the sudden altering of his state of mind, but he clings to what remains. It feels as though he has filled his lungs with the Drift, and now, in the moment of resurfacing, that small remnant still burns inside his chest.

Newt immediately starts wrestling with the myriad of harnesses and connecting cables wiring him to Reanimator’s PONS unit. “Stop _fidgeting,”_ Hermann mumbles, still dazed. He tugs off his helmet and sets it carefully on the armrest before unstrapping his legs. “Bloody hell. I’ll be over momentarily to help you out of that ridiculous contraption.”

“This _ridiculous contraption_ was my first ever attempt at piloting a Jaeger-Kaiju hybrid, so!” says Newt, indignant. He grits his teeth and yanks out one of the plastic tubes wired into his suit. It detaches with a loud hiss.

“I do hope that when you say _first_ attempt,” says Hermann, detaching himself from his own PONS unit with a great deal less fuss, “you mean _only_ attempt.”

“Oh, like you don’t want to do this again?”

“Let’s hope we don’t have to.”

“That’s not an answer, Herm.”

Newt murmurs _you totally wanna do it again_ in the back of Hermann’s mind. Hermann covers his mouth with his hand so Newt won’t see his smile. The echo of the Drift is still warm between them, then. More of a phantom limb than an echo. The place in Hermann’s brain where the hive mind had nested itself feels clean and clear.

He wonders if he’ll have nightmares tonight, or if the heat of the Drift has burned the hive mind’s influence out. Purification by fire. Reanimator’s kaiju brain floats silent and still in its tank.

Newt winces as he yanks another tube out of its socket. His helmet is immediately discarded, clattering across the ground as he wobbles out of his pilot’s rig and starts fumbling with his gloves. “Skin contact,” he mutters under his breath, half to himself. “Skin to skin contact. Right the fuck now.”

Hermann takes a deep breath, both hands firmly on the armrests, and pushes himself up. He sways immediately, both legs numb from the full-body tension of piloting a Jaeger, but before he can stumble back into his seat Newt has already taken Hermann’s face in both hands and kissed him hard.

It reminds Hermann of their first kiss, in the helicopter all those years ago, but this is different. That had been quick and desperate, and Hermann had been too shocked to kiss him properly back. This is slow, and intentional, and Newt’s certainly a much better kisser now.

The moment that thought crosses Hermann’s mind Newt breaks the kiss with a little wet smack and scowls at him. “I was a _very_ satisfying kisser, thank you.”

“You were terrible,” Hermann says, trying to hide his amusement. “Absolutely bloody awful.”

He wobbles a little on his feet and Newt slots himself neatly under his arm, holding him steady. He tilts his head up to press their foreheads together. “That was amazing,” he whispers, giddy with excitement. “You were amazing.”

Hermann _feels_ amazing. He’s still consciously aware of the patterns of Newt’s consciousness aligning themselves with his own, wrapping around each other like double helixes. He hadn’t experienced _this_ that first time around. The joyful afterglow of the Drift.

He feels like he could do anything.

“You,” he says quietly, then clears his throat. Tries again. “You saw everything, in the Drift?”

“Yeah,” says Newt. His voice is a little unsteady when he says it.

“We both . . . saw everything.”

“Yeah.”

“Then you-”

“You know I know,” Newt stammers. “You _know_ it, man.”

Hermann slips his arm reluctantly off Newt’s shoulders. He won’t lean on him, not for this, but he damn well won’t sit down either. He stands steadily on his own two feet and grits his teeth so he doesn’t wince.

“Newton,” he says, and Newt jumps at him, flinging his arms around his neck.

“Ask me,” says Newt, his voice high and shaky against Hermann’s mouth. He sounds like he’s about to cry. “I mean it. I’m so serious right now. Don’t put it off for another fucking minute.”

“You already know what I’m going to ask.”

“You already know what I’m gonna say.”

Hermann swallows. He’d had a whole speech he’d been prepared to stumble through, making a fool of himself in the process, but now he can’t recall a word of it.

“Newton,” he says tremulously.

“Good start,” Newt nods. He’s definitely crying now, but he’s smiling too. “Good start.”

“You . . . have annoyed me for nearly two decades now,” says Hermann weakly. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d very much like to continue being annoyed by you for decades more.”

“You’d like me to annoy you, but in like a legally binding way?”

“Yes,” Hermann breathes. “Newton. My . . . Newton. Will you marry me?”

When Newt kisses him, Hermann feels something change inside him. It’s as though something has woken up, something powerful and roaring and ecstatic. He feels a sudden, mad desire to pick Newt up and carry him back to the hotel. To hike up the titanic corpse of Hohenheim and scream from the summit, _I am in love! I am so in love!_

Newt’s lips are red with kisses when he finally pulls away. He wipes his eyes with the heel of his hand, “We have to elope.”

“Oh thank god,” says Hermann. “I’m glad you said something.”

“Let’s just fucking- let’s just go, let’s just go for it.”

“I don’t think I can endure another long engagement.”

“I hope my dad won’t get pissed if we don’t have a ceremony. _Although,_ ” Newt adds, dragging out the word as though building up to an important revelation, “we could probably get Hannibal to pay for a mafia wedding.”

“Absolutely not,” says Hermann, smiling.

Outside, he knows Mako and Raleigh will be running down the beach towards them. Tendo following behind, and Hannibal strolling at a sedate pace behind him. They’ll want to know everything.

But this, for the moment, is theirs.

Hermann leans down to kiss Newt again, and doesn’t care who sees him.


	13. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for joining me on this strange little journey into the Pacific Rim world.

The night air raises goosebumps on Newt’s skin as he rolls up his sleeves, and together with Raleigh and Tendo he carefully walks a pair of dining room tables up the stairs to the roof. They push them together so all six of them can sit together comfortably; Newt, Hermann, and Mako on one side, Tendo, Hannibal, and Raleigh on the other. They eat under the glow of orange paper lanterns, and watch in eager fascination as Hannibal’s scalpers begin to disarticulate the titanic corpse of Hohenheim on the beach.

Just as Newt suspected, Raleigh and Mako want to know _everything_. He and Hermann take turns, one talking while the other eats and vice versa. The sound of Hermann stumbling over his words when he gets overexcited makes Newt’s heart feel too big for his chest. _That’s me,_ he thinks, pressing one Doc Martin up against Hermann’s sensible brogue under the table. _You got that from me_.

Newt looks at the night sky differently now. Hermann finds such unfathomable beauty in all the secret little rules of the universe, where Newt had only ever seen questions and obstacles. Now when Newt sees the stars, he also sees Hermann’s memories of them. Hermann’s thoughts sketch the lines of constellations in the night sky.

Their old arguments seem petty now, and all the more precious for their pettiness.

“Is this true?” Mako says, covering her mouth with a cloth napkin. “Dr. Geiszler?”

Newt, momentarily distracted by the stars- _the synapses of Hermann’s mind gleaming like diamonds spilling through his fingers_ \- cranes his neck to get a glimpse of her sitting on Hermann’s opposite side. He didn’t hear what Hermann had just been saying, but he doesn’t have to. Not with the misty-eyed way Hermann is watching him. The same way he looks at Newt after lovemaking.

“Yeah,” says Newt warmly. He’s not looking at Mako when he says it. “Yeah. It’s true. We’re gonna take a break for a while, I think. After we get off this island. And then I’m gonna marry him.”

Hermann closes his eyes and takes a shuddery breath. Raleigh and Mako immediately burst into warm congratulations, and Mako even gives Hermann a side hug that Hermann accepts with his customary awkwardness. Tendo, sitting opposite Newt, offers him a high five, and when their hands clasp over the table he leans in and whispers, “About time, brother,” just barely loud enough for Newt to hear.

Only Hannibal remains silent. He spends a long moment finishing his mouthful of rice before setting his chopsticks down on the table with surprising delicacy. “Taking a break, are you?” he says quietly.

The table falls into an uncomfortable silence. Hermann straightens up in his seat. “Yes, we are.”

Hannibal hums noncommittally. He takes off his sunglasses- ever present, even at night- and rubs the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. “Guess you’re pretty much decided,” he says finally, giving Hermann a cool, level stare across the table.

Newt stares at his plate and doesn’t say anything. Hermann, however, tilts his chin a little higher. “Yes,” he says, “I am,” and when Newt looks back up at him, Hermann kisses him.

The touch of his skin is almost too much now, with the memory of the Drift so fresh in Newt’s mind. He knows Hermann’s body as intimately as he knows his own. Knows what it’s like to inhabit it, to endure the myriad of aches and pains and pleasures Hermann’s body can provide.

 _I promised,_ whispers Hermann in the back of Newt’s mind. When he gently pulls away, Newt realizes that they’ve laced their fingers together on the table next to their plates. Newt looks over at Hannibal Chau and squeezes Hermann’s hand tighter, as if to say, _my own and my only_.

Hannibal blinks at them slowly. Then he looks down at his plate with a little chuckle, and Newt feels something proud and exuberant roar like a kaiju in his soul.

 

It’s a good two weeks before they make it off the island. Newt walks down to the beach one last time before they go.

He sits down by the water and tugs off his boots, digging his feet into the sand. He’ll miss this place, oddly enough. Having Tendo there, and Mako, and even Raleigh, reminded him of all the best parts of the war. The camaraderie, and the sense of belonging to something bigger than himself.

Newt watches the sun go down over the water. He doesn’t mind the extra wait, truly. Hermann still has to wrap up his affairs with Hannibal Chau, after all. Tie up all the loose ends of his bookkeeping so Hannibal won’t have any excuse to bother them for the next couple months. _Touring with Hermann._ Newt can hardly believe it. Finally an excuse to drag Hermann from university to university, showing off the _real_ rockstar genius of the K-Science division.

Hannibal wouldn’t dare deny them this. Not when the profits he’ll rake in on Hohenheim’s corpse will far exceed the cost of Reanimator.

Newt stands up. Puts his arms up over his head and stretches the languid ache in his muscles out of them. His whole body had been sore after he stumbled from Reanimator’s skull, still thrumming with drift-energy and battered from too many close calls with Hohenheim’s sting. Weeks later, he’s still sore, but from the much more pleasant pastime of being well-bruised and thoroughly adored every time Hermann gets him alone.

He picks his boots up by the laces and lets them dangle at his side as he trudges up the sand. Hermann will be waiting for him in their room. Newt can imagine him now, frazzled from the ordeal of packing. Demanding that Newt tell him where his reading glasses are- _still on the old man cord around your neck, Herm-_ and insisting that all this could not, _could not,_ have fit in their suitcases on the way here.

The image turns out not to be that far off, although Hermann’s reading glasses are up on his forehead instead, and when he opens the door to their room the first words out of his mouth are, “And where have _you_ been, dear?”

Newt drops his sandy boots by the door and kisses Hermann’s cheek on the way in. “I, uh, figured you pretty much had the packing well in hand?”

“Incredible,” Hermann mutters. He shuts the door behind them. “Incredible. We’re not even married yet and you’re already looking for a divorce.”

To Hermann’s credit, most of the packing is indeed already done. His suitcase is standing by the door while Newt’s is still splayed open on the bed, surrounded by half-folded laundry and neatly sorted piles of Newt’s hair products.

There’s also a red paper bag sitting on the dresser.

“Herm?” Newt says, shucking off his coat and tossing it haphazardly across his open suitcase. “Is this yours?”

Hermann follows him into the bedroom and leans against the doorframe. He adjusts his glasses haughtily on his nose. “One of Hannibal’s aides dropped it off earlier today, which you would know, if you’d bothered to help me pack.”

Newt picks up the bag and turns it over in his hands. It’s very heavy, and the paper crinkles when he squeezes it.

“She said it was Hannibal’s idea,” Hermann says quietly. “A going-away present.”

“Dude, did you open it already?”

“Of course I did. Who do you take me for?”

Newt snorts, and pushes aside the red tissue paper to peer inside.

For a moment, he’s not sure he understands what he’s seeing.

He looks up at Hermann, who’s resolutely staring at the wall three inches to the left of Newt’s head. He looks back down at the bag.

“Is this for real?” he says, his voice a little unsteady.

Hermann nods stoically. Then a laugh sputters out of him so unexpectedly that his hand jumps to his mouth to stifle it. He nods again, openly delighted now. “It is, it is. Oh Newton, I did say you’d get one, didn’t I?”

Utterly speechless, Newt reaches inside the bag and draws out a rolled up bundle of gray leather, cracked and rough in some places and slippery smooth in others. He lets the jacket fall open in his hands. The inside is lined with toxic blue satin.

“Oh my god,” he says, dumbstruck.

Hermann comes close enough to press his forehead against Newt’s shoulder. “There are boots in there too.”

 _“Boots?”_ Newt almost whimpers. He offers the jacket to Hermann to hold, cradling it like a newborn, before digging out the last of the tissue paper. Sure enough, he finds a pair of boots at the bottom of the bag. The same heavy gray leather, with the same bright blue lining.

Newt’s hands are shaking with excitement when he takes them out. He sits down heavily on the edge of the bed and begins to lace them on, one after the other. “What the fuck,” he whispers, absolutely awed. “What the fuck, Hermann.”

“You earned them,” says Hermann, pride evident in his voice. “Even he knows it.”

Newt gets the second boot laced and almost jumps out of bed to take the coat from Hermann’s hands. He slips it on- its warm, and butter-soft against his skin- and turns to face Hermann, his arms spread wide. “How do I look?” he asks eagerly.

Hermann touches Newt’s shoulders gently through the leather. Slides his hand down his arms, squeezes them gently. “You look,” he says thoughtfully, as though considering an equation that’s proving a great pleasure to solve, “like a man I'd be proud to call my husband.”

 _I did it for you,_ Newt thinks, as his heart speeds up at the touch of Hermann’s hands.

Hermann leans forward, ever so slightly, and presses their foreheads together.

_No. We did it for us._

Newt closes his eyes, and whispers words of love until Hermann kisses him silent.


End file.
